Disaster and Sociolegal Studies

by Susan Sterett (Editor)

Legal governance of disaster brings both care and punishment to the upending of daily life of place-based disasters. National states use disasters to reorganize how they govern. This collection considers how law is implicated in disaster. The late modern expectation that states are to care for their population makes it particularly important to point out the limits to care – limits that appear less in the grand rhetoric than in the government reports, case-level decisionmaking, administrative rules, and criminalization that make up governing. The authors argue that government documents explaining disaster put the responsibility to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances on people – often on individuals – not on the government. Law is a causal force in what are commonly called natural disasters. When courts consider causation and property rights, often separated across cases and over time, they often defer to the importance of economic activity. Police forces charged with protection rapidly turn on those they are to protect, thinking that people need protection from the victims of disaster. These insightful essays feature leading scholars whose perspectives range across disasters around the world. Their findings point to reconsidering what states do in disaster, and how law enables and constrains action.