Professor Tom Baker | |
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Academic background | |
Alma mater | Harvard University and Harvard Law School |
Academic work | |
Institutions | University of Pennsylvania Law School |
Main interests | Insurance law |
Tom Baker (born 1959) is professor of law and a scholar of insurance law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. [1]
Baker holds both a BA (1982) and a JD (1986) from Harvard University. [1]
Baker clerked for Judge Juan R. Torruella of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. He then practiced with the firm of Covington and Burling in Washington,DC. He served as an Associate Counsel for the Independent Counsel investigating the Iran-Contra affair.
Before joining Penn Law in 2008,he was Connecticut Mutual Professor of Law and director of the Insurance Law Center at the University of Connecticut School of Law. One of his students at UConn Law was future U.S. Senator Chris Murphy.
His research explores insurance,risk,and responsibility in a wide variety of settings,using methods and perspectives drawn from economics,sociology,and history,as well as law.
He is co-founder of the Insurance and Society Study Group,an informal association of scholars from law,humanities and the social sciences who write about risk and insurance. Baker is regularly involved as a consultant in high-stakes insurance projects and litigation.
Baker is the Reporter for the Restatement of the Law ,Liability Insurance published by the American Law Institute in 2019. [2]
Product liability is the area of law in which manufacturers,distributors,suppliers,retailers,and others who make products available to the public are held responsible for the injuries those products cause. Although the word "product" has broad connotations,product liability as an area of law is traditionally limited to products in the form of tangible personal property.
In law and insurance,a proximate cause is an event sufficiently related to an injury that the courts deem the event to be the cause of that injury. There are two types of causation in the law:cause-in-fact,and proximate cause. Cause-in-fact is determined by the "but for" test:But for the action,the result would not have happened. The action is a necessary condition,but may not be a sufficient condition,for the resulting injury. A few circumstances exist where the but-for test is ineffective. Since but-for causation is very easy to show,a second test is used to determine if an action is close enough to a harm in a "chain of events" to be legally valid. This test is called proximate cause. Proximate cause is a key principle of insurance and is concerned with how the loss or damage actually occurred. There are several competing theories of proximate cause. For an act to be deemed to cause a harm,both tests must be met;proximate cause is a legal limitation on cause-in-fact.
The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School is the law school of the University of Pennsylvania,a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia,Pennsylvania. Penn Carey Law offers the degrees of Juris Doctor (J.D.),Master of Laws (LL.M.),Master of Comparative Laws (LL.C.M.),Master in Law (M.L.),and Doctor of the Science of Law (S.J.D.).
In criminal and civil law,strict liability is a standard of liability under which a person is legally responsible for the consequences flowing from an activity even in the absence of fault or criminal intent on the part of the defendant.
Workers' compensation or workers' comp is a form of insurance providing wage replacement and medical benefits to employees injured in the course of employment in exchange for mandatory relinquishment of the employee's right to sue his or her employer for the tort of negligence. The trade-off between assured,limited coverage and lack of recourse outside the worker compensation system is known as "the compensation bargain.”One of the problems that the compensation bargain solved is the problem of employers becoming insolvent as a result of high damage awards. The system of collective liability was created to prevent that and thus to ensure security of compensation to the workers.
In American jurisprudence,the Restatements of the Law are a set of treatises on legal subjects that seek to inform judges and lawyers about general principles of common law. There are now four series of Restatements,all published by the American Law Institute,an organization of judges,legal academics,and practitioners founded in 1923.
William Lloyd Prosser was the Dean of the School of Law at UC Berkeley from 1948 to 1961. Prosser authored several editions of Prosser on Torts,universally recognized as the leading work on the subject of tort law for a generation. It is still widely used today,now known as Prosser and Keeton on Torts,5th edition. Furthermore,in the 1950s,Dean Prosser became Reporter for the Second Restatement of Torts.
George L. Priest is an American legal scholar specializing in antitrust law. Priest has taught at Yale Law School since 1981,where he is the Edward J. Phelps Professor of Law and Economics and Director of the John M. Olin Center for Law,Economics,and Public Policy. Priest is a noted antitrust scholar,and is also the author of a wide number of articles and monographs on the subjects of product liability,tort law,insurance litigation,and settlement. Among his students at Yale was journalist Emily Bazelon.
Aaron D. Twerski is an American lawyer and professor. He is the Irwin and Jill Cohen Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School,as well as a former Dean and professor of tort law at Hofstra University School of Law.
Tort reform consists of changes in the civil justice system in common law countries that aim to reduce the ability of plaintiffs to bring tort litigation or to reduce damages they can receive. Such changes are generally justified under the grounds that litigation is an inefficient means to compensate plaintiffs;that tort law permits frivolous or otherwise undesirable litigation to crowd the court system;or that the fear of litigation can serve to curtail innovation,raise the cost of consumer goods or insurance premiums for suppliers of services,and increase legal costs for businesses. Tort reform has primarily been prominent in common law jurisdictions,where criticism of judge-made rules regarding tort actions manifests in calls for statutory reform by the legislature.
Geoffrey Cornell Hazard Jr. was Trustee Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania Law School,where he taught from 1994 to 2005,and the Thomas E. Miller Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law. He was also Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale Law School.
George Bermann is an American lawyer and scholar of international law. He is the Walter Gelhorn Professor of Law,the Jean Monnet Professor of European Union Law,the Director of the Center for International Commercial and Investment Arbitration Law,and the Co-Director of the European Legal Studies Center at Columbia Law School,as well as a permanent faculty member of the Institut d'Études Politiques in Paris,France,and the Collège d'Europe in Bruges,Belgium. Previously,he held the Tocqueville-Fulbright Distinguished Professorship at the University of Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne).
Lance Liebman is an American law professor. He is the former Dean of Columbia Law School,and served as the Director of the American Law Institute from May 1999 to May 2014.
Ward Farnsworth is Professor of Law and holder of the W. Page Keeton Chair at the University of Texas School of Law,where he was Dean from 2012-2022. He served as Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law Third,Torts:Liability for Economic Harm,and is the author of books on law,rhetoric,philosophy,and chess.
The Arbitration Roundtable of Toronto is made up of several litigators,academics,arbitrators,and mediators from the Greater Toronto Area. The group promotes arbitration as an alternative method of conflict resolution over litigation,especially in commercial suits. Members include commercial litigators from Toronto law firms including some of the Seven Sisters of Bay Street. Each member has experience and interest in promoting commercial Arbitration. The group dedicates its time to encouraging this form of Dispute resolution through seminars,papers,and talks.
Sarah Elizabeth Savoia Vance is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
Kyle D. Logue is an American law professor and the Douglas A. Kahn Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. He was appointed to serve as interim dean of the Law School effective January 1,2024,until a permanent dean is appointed. From 2006-2016 he was the Wade H. and Dores M. McCree Collegiate Professor of Law. Logue is a leading scholar and teacher in the fields of insurance law,tax law,and torts. Logue uses insights from economics,psychology,and other disciplines to shed light on issues relating to the allocation,regulation,and fair distribution of risk in society. His recent research includes work on how private insurance contracts regulate individual and commercial behavior and on how public law regulates the behavior of insurance companies.
Kenneth S. Abraham is the Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law.
Ariel Porat is the president of Tel Aviv University (TAU),a full professor and former dean at TAU's Buchmann Faculty of Law. Until his appointment as president,he was a distinguished visiting professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School. He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities,incumbent of the Alain Poher Chair in Private Law at TAU,and recipient of The EMET Prize for Art,Science and Culture for Legal Research.
Keith K. Hiraoka is a Judge of the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals.