Law and Recovery From Disaster: Hurricane Katrina Law, Property and Society Series

In August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast of the United States, directly affecting 1.5 million people. Only one year earlier, an Indian Ocean tsunami struck Indonesia, destroying or damaging more than 370,000 homes. As forces of nature, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes and floods are not limited to occurrences in any one community or any one country. In Law and Recovery from Disaster: Hurricane Katrina, attention is focused on the ability of law and legal institutions to not only survive such disasters but to effectively facilitate recovery. Using Hurricane Katrina as a lens, contributors address a wide range of issues of interest to people concerned about property law, disaster preparedness, housing, insurance, small business recovery, land use planning and the needs of people with disabilities. While Hurricane Katrina is the focal point for discussion, the lessons learned are readily applicable to a variety of disaster situations in a wide range of global settings.

Contents: Law among the ruins, Jim Chen; Property and radical change: observations on property relationships from post-Katrina New Orleans, John A. Lovett; Land use and planning by design and by disaster, Frank S. Alexander; Place, disasters and disability, Debra Lyn Bassett; Natural disasters and persons with disabilities, Janet E. Lord, Michael E. Waterstone and Michael Ashley Stein; Insurance and the flood, Aviva Abramovsky; Participation and disintermediation in a risk society, Robert J. Rhee; Small business recovery from a natural disaster: lessons from Katrina, Rodney C. Runyan and Patricia Huddleston; Legislation and criminalization impacting renters displaced by Katrina, Olympia Duhart and Eloisa C. Rodriguez-Dod; Navigating the topography of inequality post-disaster: a proposal for remedying past geographic segregation during rebuilding, Michèle Alexandre; How the new federalism failed Katrina victims, Erin Ryan; Table of cases; Bibliography; Index.

Robin Paul Malloy is Ashgate's editor of the Law, Property and Society series, and has published a number of books including Law in a Market Context: An Introduction to Market Concepts in Legal Reasoning (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Law and Market Economy: Reinterpreting the Values of Law and Economics (Cambridge University Press, 2000).