ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the development of the use of “risk” and “dangerousness” as human attributes in American law with a special focus on modern sexually violent predator (SVP) laws. Dangerous or risky behavior has always been the straightforward and unproblematic object of the law. But risk or danger, understood not as behavior but as an attribute of a person, has had a much more troubled relationship with the law, and its role in the law has developed along a more circuitous route. Modern SVP laws put risk, understood in this way, front and center.
