law

Freedom From Harm: The Civilizing Influence of Health, Safety and Environmental Regulation

Public Citizen and Democracy Project, 1986.  Co-authored with Joan Claybrook.  This book surveys the neglected, life-saving, civilizing benefits of health, safety and environmental regulation, which are typically understated or ignored by cost-benefit analysis and corporate adversaries of regulation.  In particular, the book focuses on the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. 

The Great Hartford Circus Fire: Creative Settlement of Mass Disasters

Yale University Press, 1991.  A history of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus fire on July 6, 1944, which killed 169 people, and its creative legal aftermath, a mass settlement of hundreds of liability suits.  The book describes how, with little guidance from existing case law and many quarrels and uncertainties, three enterprising lawyers secured a court-supervised receivership that kept the circus in business, enabling it to generate profits that could pay off the claims brought against it.

Pages