Teaching Torts Without Insurance: A Second-Best Solution

Teachers, scholars and practitioners have long appreciated the symbiotic relationship of torts and insurance. Indeed, the assertion that tort law and insurance law are intertwined is utterly unremarkable; many commentators have observed that tort law cannot be understood if the business of insurance and the law regulating it is ignored, and that insurance law cannot be understood if tort law is ignored. Several generations of law students have read casebooks, which in varying degrees pay homage to the connections between torts and insurance. Many law review articles and noteworthy books (or portions thereof) have plumbed the tort-insurance relationship. Although one of us has taught Torts for many years but has never taught Insurance, and the other of us has taught Insurance for many years but has never taught Torts, both of us have both long believed that each of our respective principal subjects is diminished if it is studied without the rich context provided by the other\u27s primary field. Neither of us would operate a motor vehicle, set up a business, or venture very far from home without insurance; we suggest that it is just as unwise to teach torts without insurance