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Tel: 215.746.2185
Email: tombaker@law.upenn.edu
Expertise
- Contracts
- Insurance Law
- Torts
Bio
Tom Baker, a preeminent scholar in insurance law, explores insurance, risk, and responsibility using methods and perspectives drawn from economics, sociology, and history.
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Tom Baker, a preeminent scholar in insurance law, explores insurance, risk, and responsibility using methods and perspectives drawn from economics, sociology, and history. He is author of The Medical Malpractice Myth (Chicago, 2005), in which he attacks misperceptions behind the tort reform movement and proposes an evidence-based approach to medical liability reform. Baker’s work on moral hazard has been described as "profound." In his 1996 paper, On the Genealogy of Moral Hazard (Texas Law Review) Baker explores the shortcomings of moral hazard as a neutral technical basis for reforming tort law, workers compensation, health insurance and social welfare programs. In the book (edited with Jonathan Simon) Embracing Risk: The Changing Culture of Insurance and Responsibility (Chicago 2002) he sets out an ambitious agenda for a sociology of insurance and risk.
His most recent work examines relationships among directors’ and officers’ liability insurance, corporate governance, and securities litigation. He is active in the Law and Society Association and is a 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.
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Representative Professional Positions
Penn Law - William Maul Measey Professor of Law and Health Sciences (2009- ); Professor of Law (2008-09)
University of Connecticut – Connecticut Mutual Professor of Law and Director, Insurance Law Center (1997-08)
Law Clerk to the Hon. Juan Torruella, U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (1986-87)
University of Miami – Associate Professor (1992-97)
Visiting Professor – Vanderbilt, Columbia, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Representative Publications
Allowing Patients to Waive the Right to Sue for Malpractice: A Response to Thaler and Sunstein 104 Nw. U. L. REV. (forthcoming 2009) (with Timothy Lytton).
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Government as Risk Manager, in PRINCIPLES OF REGULATION, John Cisternino & David Moss, eds. (forthcoming 2009) (with David Moss).
The Effects of Tort Reform on Medical Malpractice Insurers’ Ultimate Losses, 76 J. RISK & INS. 197 (2009) (with Patricia Born and Kip Viscusi)
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Liability Insurance at the Tort-Crime Boundary, in FAULT LINES: TORT LAW AND CULTURAL PRACTICE, (David M. Engel and Michael McCann, eds., Stanford Univ. Press 2009).
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How the Merits Matter: D&O Insurance and Securities Settlements, 157 U. PA. L. REV. 755 (2009) (with Sean Griffith).
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INSURANCE LAW AND POLICY: CASES, MATERIALS AND PROBLEMS (Aspen Publishing 2003; 2d ed. 2008).
Liability Insurance, Moral Luck, and Auto Accidents, 9 THEORETICAL INQUIRIES IN L. 165 (2008).
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Embracing Risk, Sharing Responsibility (Symposium: Risk and Responsibility in the Twenty-First Century), 56 DRAKE L. REV. 561 (2008).
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THE MEDICAL MALPRACTICE MYTH (University of Chicago Press 2005) (paperback 2007).
The Missing Monitor in Corporate Governance: The Directors’ and Officers’ Liability Insurer, 95 GEO. L.J. 1795 (2007) (with Sean Griffith).
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Predicting Corporate Governance Risk: Evidence from the Directors’ and Officers’ Liability Insurance Market, 74 CHI. L. REV. 487 (2007) (with Sean Griffith).
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Offer of Judgment Rules and Civil Litigation: An Empirical Study of Automobile Insurance Litigation in the East, 59 VAND. L. REV. 155 (2006) (with Albert Yoon).
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Reconsidering the Harvard Medical Practice Study Conclusions about the Validity of Medical Malpractice Claims, 33 J.L. MED. & ETHICS 501 (2005).
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Liability Insurance as Tort Regulation: Six Ways that Liability Insurance Shapes Tort Law in Action, 12 CONN. INS. L.J. 1 (2005).
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Medical Malpractice and the Insurance Underwriting Cycle, 54 DEPAUL L. REV.393 (2005).
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The Virtues of Uncertainty in Law: An Experimental Approach, 89 IOWA L. REV. 443 (2004) (with Alon Harel and Tamar Kugler).
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Insuring Liability Risks, 29 GENEVA PAPERS ON RISK AND INSURANCE 87 (2004).
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Real Torts: Using Barry Werth’s Damages in the Law School Classroom, 2 NEV. L. J. 386 (2002).
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Liability and Insurance After September 11th: Embracing Risk Meets the Precautionary Principle, 27 GENEVA PAPERS ON RISK & INS. 342 (2002).
EMBRACING RISK: THE CHANGING CULTURE OF INSURANCE AND RESPONSIBILITY (contributing editor, with Jonathan Simon, University of Chicago Press 2002).
Blood Money, New Money and the Moral Economy of Tort Law in Action, 35 L. & SOC’Y REV. 275 (2001).
Insuring Morality, 29 ECON. & SOC’Y 559 (2000).
Transforming Punishment into Compensation: In the Shadow of Punitive Damages, 1998 WIS. L. REV. 101.
Reconsidering Insurance for Punitive Damages, 1998 WIS. L. REV. 211.
For additional publications, please consult
Current & Recent Research
Current Working Papers
Jackpot Justice and the American Tort System: Thinking Beyond Junk Science (with Herbert M. Kritzer and Neil Vidmar) (SSRN: 2008).
Insurance Against Misinformation in the Securities Market (SSRN: 2007).
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