Law of Torts

This new fourth edition has been completely revised and updated to take account of developments since the last edition and a new section on vicarious liability has been added.

When accidents occur and people suffer injuries, who ought to bear the loss? Tort law offers a complex set of rules to answer this question, but up to now philosophers have offered little by way of analysis of these rules. In eight essays commissioned for this volume, leading legal theorists examine the philosophical foundations of tort law. This collection will be of interest to professionals and advanced students working in philosophy of law, social theory, political theory, and law, as well as anyone seeking a better understanding of tort law.

This exceptional collection of twenty-two essays on the philosophical fundamentals of tort law assembles many of the world's leading commentators on this particularly fascinating conjunction of law and philosophy. The contributions range broadly, from inquiries into how tort law derives from Aristotle, Aquinas, and Kant to the latest economic and rights-based theories of legal reponsibility. This is truly a multi-national production, with contributions from several distinguished Oxford scholars of law and philosophy and many prominent scholars from the United States, Canada, and Israel. A provocative closing essay by one of the world's leading moral philosophers illuminates how tort law enables philosophers to observe the abstract theories of their discipline put to the concrete test in the legal resolution of real-world controversies based on principles of right and wrong.

Most of us know very little about the law. We pick up bits of information from television and newspaper accounts of current legal battles, and from bestselling novels and popular movies. But these pieces do not give us an accurate or complete picture. In Law 101, Jay M. Feinman offers a delightfully clear introduction to law, covering the main subjects found in the first year of law school and giving us a basic understanding of the American legal tradition. Readers are introduced to every aspect of the legal system, from constitutional law and the litigation process to tort law, contract law, property law, and criminal law. Feinman illuminates each discussion with many intriguing, outrageous, and infamous cases, from the scalding coffee case that cost McDonald's half a million dollars, to the sensational murder trial in Victorian London that led to the legal definition of insanity, to the epochal decision in Marbury v. Madison that gave the Supreme Court the power to declare state and federal laws unconstitutional. He broadens the reader's legal vocabulary, clarifying the meaning of everything from "due process" and "equal protection" in constitutional law, to the distinction between "murder" and "manslaughter" in criminal law. Perhaps most important, we learn that law is voluminous and complex, but accessible to everyone. Anyone who enjoys Court TV will find this book irresistible. Everyone who wants a better grasp of current legal issues, from students contemplating law school to journalists covering the legislature or the courts, will find here a wonderful source of information--a complete, clear, and colorful map of the American legal system.

This awe-inspiring book is the first of a two volume treatise on the law of non-contractual obligations. The result of a unique attempt to discover the common elements of the law of torts of all the member states of the European Union, it is founded on the belief that the approximation of European laws should not be left to the directives and regulations of Brussels alone. The first task of such a project is to determine to what extent a jus commune europaeum already exists. To this end, von Bar has undertaken a thorough, detailed and extensive analysis of the relevant court rulings and academic writings of all the jurisdictions of the European Union to distill a European common law of torts. The insights gained from the comparative analysis also offer a guidance to greater harmonisation in the future. The material covered in volume one includes: the areas of application of tort law and its boundaries with contract, property, criminal and constitutional law; the elements of liability under the general clauses of the European civil codes and the more specific torts of the common law. Further topics include: strict liability, liability for other persons, animals and premises; multiple tortfeasors; and an account of European Union and Council of Europe attempts to harmonise the less coherent areas of tort law. Von Bar's book is destined to become a landmark in the area of comparative law in general, and comparative torts in particular. From the author's preface The attempt undertaken here to draw up a system of a common European law of torts is an orthodox treatise on the non-contractual law of obligations. This book displays distinctive features only in so far as its material stems from all the laws of tort within the European Union. It seemed possible to understand and portray each tort law as merely a national manifestation of a single discipline. For, although different legal practices which have each grown naturally in their own environment do occasionally lead to different results, they can be dealt with in the same way as a single legal system in which a lawyer has to find his way through a variety of opinions. The person who looks, not only at his own, but also surrounding laws, broadens the range of possible debate. In writing about different laws he undertakes work fundamentally no different from that on his own legal system, so long as the systems are equal in their basic values, in the quality of their legal method, and have continuously learned from each other. This is the case in the countries of the European Union, and it is therefore possible to condense their different national laws to a common European law of torts (or delict). To try to understand its structures does not mean leaving distinctive features of individual nations out of consideration. Without an understanding of their effectiveness and their elegance, the treasure of judicial knowledge, which distinguishes European private law, will not be appreciated. However, to think in a European fashion firstly means stressing the common characteristics, secondly, learning to understand national laws as reactions to developments in neighbouring countries, and thirdly, tackling historical coincidences and rough edges European politics is not our primary concern, and the question whether reflections on common European private law can flow into a general law, that is to say into an extensive unification of law in the fashion of a Civil Code, is altogether a cura posterior. The challenge is to identify how the sixteen systems actually function, not how they would function were they united in one system. we are portraying here, not a single national law in comparison with other laws, rather we have chosen from the start a European standpoint; European meaning the states of the European Union

Over the past two decades, the field of law and economics has matured to the point where scholars have employed the latest economic methods in an effort to understand the nature of legal rules and to guide legal reform. This book is the first to provide a broad survey of this scholarship as it has been applied to problems in torts, contracts, property, and litigation. It will therefore serve as a convenient reference guide to this exciting field.

This is a book about the way in which the law of tort protects financial assets such as money, property and contracts. It is not a conventional textbook, either in content or arrangement, and the analysis goes well beyond standard undergraduate texts. Many of the issues receive very little attention in the standard texts. This is a thoroughly revised and rewritten new edition which builds on the critical acclaim achieved by the first edition.

The scope and application of the rules of civil jurisdiction is of immense practical importance in the conduct of transnational tort cases. Frequently such rules can dictate whether the plaintiff has an effective remedy or not and the shape of the ensuing litigation. The incidence of transborder harms is on the increase. Transboundary pollution (for example, fall-out from Chernobyl, the determination of proper forum for litigation of the Bhopal dispute); the rise in complex international fraud (Guiness, Ferranti, BCCI); the increase in scope for product liability and intellectual property litigation in international commerce; and transnational personal injury cases arising from the increased flow of persons across national borders. These practical problems give rise to difficult legal issues, which existing domestic rules of jurisdiction may be ill-equipped to resolve, and in this timely collection of original articles a leading team of contributors assess existing legal provisions and examine the prospects for reform.

The late John Fleming, emeritus Professor of Law in the University of California at Berkeley, was the pre-eminent torts lawyer of the age; his Law of Torts has influenced generations of students and scholars, and remains a classic of legal literature. In this volume, distinguished academics and judges from around the world pay tribute to him in a collection of essays which range widely across tort law, legal theory, legal history and comparative law. Topics discussed include: tort and human rights; the duty of care in negligence; codification of the law of obligations in Europe; the basis of strict liability in particular and of responsibility generally in tort law; and aspects of products liability. These stimulating essays have much to say about the past, present and future of the law of obligations and will be of great interest to scholars and lawyers of all legal systems. From the editors' preface John Fleming was one of the most influential writers on the law of torts and comparative law in the English-speaking world this century. His towering contribution to scholarship is evidenced not only by the great prestige his work attracts in academic circles but also by the frequency and high respect with which his work is cited by judges in appellate courts of many jurisdictions. The authors of this collection of essays on the law of obligations intend it as a tribute to his achievements.

Declared dead some twenty-five years ago, the idea of freedom of contract has enjoyed a remarkable intellectual revival. In The Fall and Rise of Freedom of Contract leading scholars in the fields of contract law and law-and-economics analyze the new interest in bargaining freedom.

The 1970s was a decade of regulatory triumphalism in North America, marked by a surge in consumer, securities, and environmental regulation. Legal scholars predicted the "death of contract" and its replacement by regulation and reliance-based theories of liability. Instead, we have witnessed the reemergence of free bargaining norms. This revival can be attributed to the rise of law-and-economics, which laid bare the intellectual failure of anticontractarian theories. Scholars in this school note that consumers are not as helpless as they have been made out to be, and that intrusive legal rules meant ostensibly to help them often leave them worse off. Contract law principles have also been very robust in areas far afield from traditional contract law, and the essays in this volume consider how free bargaining rights might reasonably be extended in tort, property, land-use planning, bankruptcy, and divorce and family law.

This book will be of particular interest to legal scholars and specialists in contract law. Economics and public policy planners will also be challenged by its novel arguments.

Shakedown tells a two-part tale of government-sponsored extortion using the courts. Levy uncovers the worst of the abuses and advises to lawmakers what to do about them.

In the Limits of Law, Peter Schuck draws on law, social science, and history to explore this momentous clash between law's compelling promise of ordered liberty and the realistic limits of its capacity to deliver on this promise.