THE MEASURE OF INJURY: RACE, GENDER AND TORT LAW by MARTHA CHAMALLAS AND JENNIFER B. WRIGGINS

DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2011.00545.x
Date01 June 2011
Published date01 June 2011
Book Reviews
THE MEASURE OF INJURY: RACE, GENDER AND TORT LAW by
MARTHA CHAMALLAS AND JENNIFER B. WRIGGINS
(New York and London: New York University Press, 2010, 228 pp., £26.99)
The object of this book, as laid out by the authors on the first page is to
contest the `conventional wisdom . . . that the legal rules, concepts, and
structure for liability [in tort] no longer take account of the race or gender of
the parties' (p. 1). This indeed is precisely what the book does in an acces-
sible and often engaging account of American tort law. Broadly organized
around easily recognizable tort categories ± intentional torts, negligence
causation, and damages ± the book's direction and purpose is never unclear:
it is well laid out and signposted throughout. This is occasionally a
compelling read, particularly where individual cases are the focus and
especially in those sections where the interface between tort law and race is
explored; and there is certainly a lot of interesting material to introduce into
the classroom.
These many virtues notwithstanding, I found The Measure of Injury in
some ways disappointing. However, before endeavouring to explain why, I
would like to dwell in more detail on the book's considerable strengths and
to offer a fuller articulation of the authors' project. At the core of the critical
approach which the authors adopt is an attention to context which, they
assert, is not present in many more standard accounts of tort law: `what
distinguishes our critical approach . . . is the attention we have paid to the
social identity of tort victims and to the context of their injuries' (p. 183).
They go on to identify a number of `pathways' by which considerations of
race and gender enter the terrain of tort and which are evidenced in further
detail throughout the text. This elaboration of `pathways' ± offered at the
conclusion of the book rather than at the beginning ± is an illuminating way
of looking at the project conceptually although it is not in fact how the book
is structured.
1
Briefly, the pathways identified are as follows: (i) the explicit
deployment of race and gender categories in tort law (as, for example, the
authors contend in chapter 6, in the assessment of damages); (ii) the
devaluation of plaintiffs and their interests in judicial decision-making for
reasons related to race and gender (most obviously illustrated in damages
331
ß2011 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2011 Cardiff University Law School. Published by Blackwell Publishing
Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
1 I would have welcomed an earlier and fuller elaboration of the `pathways' approach
as a helpful conceptual synthesis of the authors' approach.

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