Much of what we prize in the concept “the rule of law” involves the settling of disputes through a neutral, textured, rule-laden, principled, and predictable civil process unswayed by power or influence and allowing an outcome resting on fairness, not coercion. History, both in the case of invading armies and bickering neighbors, continually demonstrates that for reasons ranging from bare inadvertence to deliberate malice, human beings harm one another. As worthy of pride as any achievement in modern society is the development of the rule of law, a concept that allows disputes to be resolved through civil actions rather than blood-feuds.

The role of law and culture is widely discussed in various professions and by a myriad of professionals – from philosophers to economists, lawyers to social psychologists, anthropologists to sociologists to political scientists – with varying degrees of insight and nonsense. Very near the core of civil law is what the Anglo-American tradition labels tort law. It is the intersection of tort law and culture that apparently motivated the title, if not the entirety, of the distinguished law professor Marshall Shapo's latest book. (He has written perhaps twenty books before this title.) Professor Shapo writes explicitly from the perspective of a law professor, and makes clear it is this perspective that guides his view. In illuminating the subject, he travels the traditional ground of any able legal academic, weaving legal precedent with statutory change, examining small alterations in legal doctrine as they contribute to global legal transformation, and specifically parsing particular areas of the law, suggesting that such changes are not independent but somehow related to American culture.