Gregory Keating

William T. Dalessi Professor of Law and Philosophy

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gkeating@law.usc.edu
Phone: (213) 740-2565
Fax: (213) 740-5502
Room: 434
Gregory C. Keating joined the USC Law faculty in 1991 and was promoted to full professor in 1996; he also holds a joint appointment with the USC Department of Philosophy. He teaches torts, legal ethics, and seminars in legal and political philosophy.

Professor Keating graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst College, earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in political philosophy from Princeton University, and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. After graduating from Harvard, he practiced law in Massachusetts for five years before joining USC Law. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and at the Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv, Israel.

Professor Keating is an editor of a leading torts casebook and writes on torts, professional responsibility and legal theory. He has published articles on the morality of reasonable risk imposition and the law of negligence more generally; on the history of and moral justification for strict liability in tort; on why justice requires that we take inefficiently great precaution against significant risks of death and devastating injury; and on issues of professional responsibility, with particular attention to the problems that confront practicing lawyers. Some of his recent titles include “Putting Duty in its Place, with Dilan A. Esper, (Loyola Law Review, 2008) (Symposium: Frontiers of Tort Liability), “Pricelessness and Life: An Essay for Guido Calabresi” (Maryland Law Review, 2005) (Symposium: Calabresi’s Costs of Accidents), and “Rawlsian Fairness and Regime Choice in the Law of Accidents” (Symposium: “Rawls and the Law,” Fordham Law Review, 2004).

A former teaching fellow at Harvard and Princeton universities, Professor Keating served as an officer of the Section on Jurisprudence of the American Association of Law Schools. He also has consulted with the County of Los Angeles on issues of professional responsibility and conflicts of interest.

Works in Progress

• “Is Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress a Freestanding Tort?” 44 Wake Forest Law Review (Symposium: The Restatement 3d of Torts)(Forthcoming Fall 2009). - (SSRN)

Books

• Teacher’s Manual to Accompany Tort and Accident Law, 4th ed. (with Robert Keeton and Lewis Sargentich) (West Group, 2005).
• Tort and Accident Law: Cases and Materials, 4th ed. (with others) (Thomson/West, 2004).
• Cases and Materials on Tort and Accident Law, 3d ed. (with Robert E. Keeton and Lewis D. Sargentich) (West Group, 1998).
• Teacher's Manual to Accompany Tort and Accident Law, 3d ed. (with Robert Keeton and Lewis Sargentich) (West Group, 1998).

Articles and Book Chapters

• "Putting ‘Duty’ in its Place: A Reply to Professors Goldberg and Zipursky," with Dilan A. Esper, 41 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 1225 (Symposium: The Frontiers of Tort Law) (2008). - (Hein)
• "The Heroic Enterprise of the Asbestos Cases," 37 Southwestern University Law Review 623 (Symposium: Perspectives on Asbestos Litigation) (2008). - (Hein)
• "Personal Inviolability and Private Law," Journal of Tort Law Vol. 1: Iss. 2, Article 4 (2007). - (bepress)
• "Strict Liability and the Mitigation of Moral Luck," Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy Vol. 1, No. 4 (2006).
• "Abusing 'Duty'," with Dilan A. Esper, 79 Southern California Law Review 265 (2006). - (Hein)
• "Property Right and Tortious Wrong in Vincent v. Lake Erie," Issues in Legal Scholarship, Article 6 (Symposium: Vincent v. Lake Erie Transportation Co. and the Doctrine of Necessity) (2005). - (bepress)
• “Pricelessness and Life: An Essay for Guido Calabresi.” 64 Maryland Law Review 159 (2005). - (Hein)
• "Rawlsian Fairness and Regime Choice in the Law of Accidents" (Symposium: Rawls and the Law). 72 Fordham Law Review 1857 (2004). - (Hein)
• "Vexing Situations: Ethics and International Practice" (with Neal Millard and Robert E. Lutz). 13 The California International Practitioner 10 (2004).
• "Irreparable Injury and Extraordinary Precaution: The Safety and Feasibility Norms in American Accident Law." 4 Theoretical Inquiries in Law 1 (January 2003). - (Hein)
• "Pressing Precaution Beyond the Point of Cost-Justification." 56 Vanderbilt Law Review 653 (April 2003). - (Hein)
• "A Social Contract Conception of the Tort Law of Accidents." In Philosophy and the Law of Torts (G. Postema, ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2001).
• "The Theory of Enterprise Liability and Common Law Strict Liability." 54 Vanderbilt Law Review 1285 (2001). - (Hein)
• "Distributive and Corrective Justice in the Tort Law of Accidents." 74 Southern California Law Review 193 (2000). - (Hein)
• "The Idea of Fairness in the Law of Enterprise Liability." 95 Michigan Law Review 1266 (1997). - (Hein)

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