Baker, Tom 1959-

views updated

Baker, Tom 1959-

PERSONAL:

Born 1959. Education: Harvard University, B.A. (magna cum laude), 1982, J.D. (magna cum laude), 1986.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of Connecticut School of Law, 65 Elizabeth St., Hartford, CT 06105. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer and educator. United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit, law clerk, 1986-87; Covington & Burling, Washington, DC, attorney, 1987-91; Neighborhood Legal Services Program, Washington, staff attorney, 1989; Office of Independent Counsel— Walsh, Washington, associate counsel, 1991-92; University of Miami Law School, Coral Gables, FL, associate professor, 1992-97; Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, visiting law professor, 1996-97, Fulbright visiting law professor, 2001-02; University of Connecticut School of Law, Hartford, CT, Connecticut Mutual Professor of Law, 1997—, director of Insurance Law Center. Elected to American Law Institute, 2000; Yale Law School, New Haven, CT, visiting lecturer, 2002; presenter at the 29th Annual Lecture of the Geneva Association, 2003.

MEMBER:

American Bar Association (Trial Torts and Insurance Practice Committee; Emerging Issues Committee), American Trial Lawyers Association, National Institutes of Health (Ethics and Genome Study Section), Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Felix Frankfurter Award, Harvard Law Review.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

(Editor, with Jonathan Simon) Embracing Risk: The Changing Culture of Insurance and Responsibility, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2002.

Insurance Law and Policy: Cases, Materials, and Problems, Aspen (New York, NY), 2003.

The Medical Malpractice Myth, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2005.

Contributor to books, including Suing the Gun Industry, edited by T. Lytton, University of Michigan Press, 2004; and Tort Law and Liability Insurance, edited by Gerhard Wagner, Springer, 2005. Contributor to professional journals and periodicals, including Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, DePaul Law Review, Nevada Law Journal, and Law & Society Review. Faculty editor for Fidelity & Surety Digest and Connecticut Insurance Law Journal.

SIDELIGHTS:

Attorney and law professor Tom Baker has written several books relating to insurance law, his specialty. He coedited his first book, Embracing Risk: The Changing Culture of Insurance and Responsibility, with Jonathan Simon. The book is a collection of essays regarding how the insurance industry has changed and grown over the last few decades as society and the perception of risk have changed. In a Journal of Risk and Insurance review, Anne Kleffner, Norma Nielson, and Stephanie Bertels noted a lack of synthesis between the articles and the need for some sort of transition, but praised the "historical depth and insights" found in the volume. The critics also felt that the collection "provides important sociological considerations that relate to … risk and insurance economics literature." Law and Social Inquiry contributor Brian J. Glenn, while conceding that the book has "gaps" caused by the inclusion of so many different authors, found the writing "highly approachable, free of jargon, and easily accessible," and regarded it as "a convenient introduction to a multifaceted field of inquiry that is rapidly coming into its own."

In 2005 Baker published The Medical Malpractice Myth, a book positing that the proliferation of medical malpractice lawsuits is not the result of a mere increase in litigiousness (as is popularly believed); it is instead the result of an increase in actual occurrences of medical malpractice. Library Journal reviewer Martha E. Stone, while calling the book "well researched" and "timely," remarked that the author "assumes a degree of legal knowledge" from his readers and noted the lack of definitions to aid the layman's understanding. A contributor to Publishers Weekly, however, observed that the "experience and perspective" that come from Baker's years of working with both the insurance industry and the legal field are evident in The Medical Malpractice Myth, and remarked that the book will be "important and controversial" in related discussions.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Law and Politics Book Review, March, 2006, Barbara A. Noah, review of The Medical Malpractice Myth, p. 253.

Library Journal, November 1, 2005, Martha E. Stone, review of The Medical Malpractice Myth, p. 105.

New England Journal of Medicine, April 20, 2006, Martin E. Gordan, review of The Medical Malpractice Myth, p. 1761.

Publishers Weekly, September 26, 2005, review of The Medical Malpractice Myth, p. 78.

Journal of Risk and Insurance, March 2005, Anne Kleffner, Norma Nielson, and Stephanie Bertels, review of Embracing Risk: The Changing Culture of Insurance and Responsibility, p. 182.

Law and Social Inquiry, winter, 2003, Brian J. Glenn, review of Embracing Risk, p. 295.