The Structure Of Tort Law

Written by a lawyer and an economist, this is the first full-length economic study of tort law--the body of law that governs liability for accidents and for intentional wrongs such as battery and defamation. Landes and Posner propose that tort law is best understood as a system for achieving an efficient allocation of resources to safety--that, on the whole, rules and doctrines of tort law encourage the optimal investment in safety by potential injurers and potential victims. The book contains both a comprehensive description of the major doctrines of tort law and a series of formal economic models used to explore the economic properties of these doctrines. All the formal models are translated into simple commonsense terms so that the "math less" reader can follow the text without difficulty; legal jargon is also avoided, for the sake of economists and other readers not trained in the law. Although the primary focus is on explaining existing doctrines rather than on exploring their implementation by juries, insurance adjusters, and other "real world" actors, the book has obvious pertinence to the ongoing controversies over damage awards, insurance rates and availability, and reform of tort law-in fact it is an essential prerequisite to sound reform. Among other timely topics, the authors discuss punitive damage awards in products liability cases, the evolution of products liability law, and the problem of liability for "mass disaster" torts, such as might be produced by a nuclear accident. More generally, this book is an important contribution to the "law and economics" movement, the most exciting and controversial development in modern legal education and scholarship, and will become an obligatory reference for all who are concerned with the study of tort law.

This English translation makes available to anglophone readers a modern classic of German tort theory. It argues that modern German tort law is faced with doctrinal tensions based on problematic theoretical assumptions which stem from historical conceptions of tortious liability, inappropriate to modern times. From a theoretical perspective, it argues against the prevalent doctrinal view in Germany that conceives of tortious liability as split between two tracks - a fault-based track and a strict liability track - each with different normative foundations. Instead, Jansen asserts that there is no rigid distinction between the normative foundations of each form of liability. Rather, both fault liability and strict liability in German law, and indeed other European systems, are best considered as resting upon the unifying theoretical structure of outcome responsibility. The book thus places responsibility rather than wrongdoing at the centre of the normative foundations of tort law. Historically, the book traces in detail how conceptions of tort liability have changed from Roman law to contemporary legal doctrine. It shows how particular historical understandings of the normative basis of tort law have led to continuing normative tensions in contemporary doctrine. Finally, the book examines how a reconstruction of modern German - and, indeed, European - law as based upon outcome responsibility should affect its doctrinal structure. This book makes contributions to the study of the theory, history, and doctrinal structure of tort law. While drawing on and explaining German tort law, its comparative, theoretical, and historical analysis will be of interest to scholars in all legal systems.

This book offers nine key ideas about tort law that will help the reader to understand its various social functions and evaluate its effectiveness in performing those functions. The book focuses, in particular, on how tort law can guide people's behaviour, and the political and social environments within which it operates. It also provides the reader with a wealth of detail about the ideas and values that underlie tort 'doctrine'-tort law's rules and principles, and the way those rules and principles operate in practice. The book is an accessible introduction to tort law that will provide students, scholars and practitioners alike with a fresh and engaging view of the subject. 'In this masterful and engaging survey, Peter Cane provides an array of illuminating perspectives on the law of torts, laying bare its nature, structure and functions, as well as its legal, social and political context.' Andrew Robertson, Professor of Law, Melbourne Law School

"The book provides scholars, lawyers and law students with a comparative overview of the law of civil liability for injuries arising outside of contract in five major legal systems in the common law and civil law traditions: England, the United States, France, Germany and Italy. The book analyzes a number of foundational issues that lie at the core of tort law in all the jurisdictions surveyed, and takes them as points of comparison for appreciating commonalities and differences between the common law and the civil law traditions, as well as within each of these traditions. The analysis covers the structure and context of tort law architectures, the role of negligence and the continuum between fault and strict liability, rules on recovery for personal injuries, non-economic losses and for pure economic losses, tests and approaches to causation, medical and products liability regimes. As such, the book provides an updated and enriched framework for understanding the rules, theories, styles of reasoning, and cultures of tort law across the Atlantic"--

Written to be accessible to all readers with a basic knowledge of tort law, this book adopts an approach which is both easily comprehended, yet also innovative and illuminating. It sets out a new and theoretically stimulating analysis of the law of tort, in which the subject is reconceived as a system of ethical rules and principles of personal responsibility. As such it can be viewed as a series of relationships between protected interests, sanctioned conduct and sanctions. These are the "building blocks" of tort law. Beyond affording a means of comprehending the fragmentary nature of tort law, the book, equally importantly, seeks to develop understanding of its relationship with other areas of the law of obligations. It also permits clearer understanding of the relationship between common law and statutory torts and throws fresh light on the links between tort law and its functions.

This title was first published in 2002. The first series of The International Library of Essays in Law and Legal Theory has established itself as a major research resource. The rapid growth of theoretically interesting scholarly work in law has increased a demand for a Second Series which includes significant recent work and also gives an opportunity to include additional areas of law. The new series follows the successful pattern established in the first of reproducing entire essays with the original page numbers as an aid to comprehensive research and accurate referencing. Volume editors have selected not only the most influential essays but those which they consider will be of greatest continuing importance. Each volume has an introduction which explains the context and the significance of the essays chosen.

This book provides a comprehensive theory of the rights upon which tort law is based and the liability that flows from violating those rights. Inspired by the account of private law contained in Immanuel Kant's Metaphysics of Morals, the book shows that Kant's theory elucidates a conception of interpersonal wrongdoing that illuminates the operation of tort law. The book then utilises this conception, applying it to the various areas of tort law, in order to develop an understanding of the particular areas in question and, just as importantly, their relationship to each other. It argues that there are three general kinds of liability found in the law of tort: liability for putting another or another's property to one's purposes directly, liability for doing something to a third party that puts another or another's property to one's purposes, and liability for pursuing purposes in a way that improperly interferes with the ability of another to pursue her legitimate purposes. It terms these forms liability for direct control, liability for indirect control and liability for injury respectively. The result is a coherent, philosophical understanding of the structure of tort liability as an entire system. In developing its position, the book considers the laws of Australia, Canada, England and Wales, New Zealand and the United States.