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Books > Law > Laws of other jurisdictions & general law > Private, property, family law > Torts / delicts
"Injury" offers the first sustained anthropological analysis and
critique of American injury law. The book approaches injury law as
a symptom of a larger American injury culture, rather than as a
tool of social justice or as a form of regulation. In doing so, it
offers a new understanding of the problematic role that law plays
in constructing Americans' relations with the objects they
consume.
Through lively historical analyses of consumer products and
workplace objects ranging from cigarettes to cheeseburgers and
computer keyboards to airbags, Jain lucidly illustrates the real
limits of the product safety laws that seek to redress consumer and
worker injury. The book draws from a wide range of materials to
demonstrate that American law sets out injury as an exceptional
state, one that can be redressed through imperfect systems of
monetary compensation. "Injury" demonstrates how laws are unable to
accommodate the ways in which physical differences among citizens
are imposed by the physical objects of culture that distribute risk
differently among populations. The book moves between detailed
accounts of individual legal cases; historical analyses of
advertising, product design, regulation, and legal history; and a
wide reading of cultural theory.
Drawing on an extensive knowledge of law and social theory,
this innovative book will be essential reading for anyone with an
interest in design, consumption, and the politics of injury.
This book of essays champions tort scholarship that puts judges at
centre stage: what they do, how they understand their role, the
heterogeneous reasons they give for their decisions, and their
constitutional responsibility to identify and articulate the
'living' and 'evolving' common law. This is 'reflexive tort
scholarship'. Reflexive tort scholars seek dialogue with Bench and
Bar. Their approach is very different from the currently
fashionable academic search for 'grand theories' that descriptively
assert that tort law is fundamentally 'all about one thing', a
unifying idea that alone explains and justifies the whole of tort
law. This book illustrates the advantages and pay-offs of the
reflexive style of scholarship by showing how it illuminates key
features of tort law. The first essay contrasts the reflexive
approach with the Grand Theory approach, while the second essay
identifies a principle of tort law (the 'cooperative principle'),
that is latent in the cases and that vindicates the value of
collaborative human arrangements. Identifying this principle calls
into question, in disputes between commercial parties, the
reasoning used to support one of the most entrenched lines of
authority in tort law - that based on the famous case of Hedley
Byrne v Heller. The final essay deploys the reflexive method to
argue that the iconic 'but-for' test of factual causation is
inadequate and narrower than the concept actually utilized in the
cases. Application of the method also prompts a reassessment of the
'scope of duty' concept and of the appropriate characterisation of
the much-discussed decision in SAAMCO. These essays, based on the
2018 Clarendon Law Lectures given at Oxford University, clearly
demonstrate the value of scholarship that 'takes the judges
seriously'.
Torts and other Wrongs is a collection of eleven of the author's
essays on the theory of the law of torts and its place in the law
more generally. Two new essays accompany nine previously published
pieces, a number of which are already established classics of
theoretical writing on private law. Together they range across the
distinction between torts and other wrongs, the moral significance
of outcomes, the nature and role of corrective and distributive
justice, the justification
The law enables private parties to undo the wrongs committed
against them, allowing victims to seek redress. A distinctive kind
of justice governs our legal rights of redress, different from the
leading corrective justice approaches. Through analysis of this key
idea, The Right of Redress helps to make sense of tort, contract,
fiduciary law, and unjust enrichment doctrine. When a wrong is
remedied, the authorship of that remedy matters. The justice in
private law is sensitive to a right holder's authorship, and
understanding how solves a number of legal theory puzzles. Many
forms of redress are only available with state assistance, and a
full account of private law requires an account of the state's
responsibility to assist. It also requires an explanation of those
cases in which the state declines to assist. Prior accounts have
drawn on Kantian principles or a Lockean social contract theory,
where The Right of Redress, drawing on public fiduciary theory,
develops a distinctive account of the state's role. This book
offers a new take on various modern features of the private law
landscape, ranging from equity, to damage caps, to arbitration, to
corporate claims, to class actions. The Right of Redress thus
offers a pathbreaking account of the justice in private law, the
political theory that underlies it, and the contemporary features
that shape our rights of redress today.
A comprehensive analysis of liability for animals this book covers
harm done by dangerous and straying animals including both
dangerous and non-dangerous species. Including a separate chapter
on special provisions relating to dogs it provides unique guidance
from an internationally renowned legal scholar. The book takes
account of the decisions of the courts which have applied,
interpreted and explained the Animals Act 1971 over the past four
decades including the House of Lords decision in Mirvahedy v Henley
(2003). Liability for animals which are not members of a dangerous
species but which, in the event, may have been proved to be
dangerous is a matter of particular interest and concern. The book
addresses matters such as harm done by animals in the course of
hunting as well as decisions on a number of non-statutory aspects
of the law of animals. The book includes the primary material of
the Animals Act, 1971 making it a comprehensive point of reference
on this subject. An earlier version of this book was published in
1972 just after the Animals Act 1971 came into force. Although the
legislation has remained substantially unamended, there has been a
steady flow of case law on the meaning and operation of the
provisions of the Act.
It is an unfortunate feature of the common law conflicts landscape
that, for all its sophistication, the relationship between the
equitable principles of the forum and the forum's choice of law
process remains unclear. This book examines this relationship from
the perspective of English law, taking account of the impact of
European law. What law applies when litigants invoke the principles
of equity of the forum or analogous doctrines in foreign law? This
book suggests that there is nothing inherent in the invocation of
the forum's equitable jurisdiction or in the nature of equitable
discourse that renders the application of the forum's equitable
principles inevitable. It then considers whether a different
methodology should be adopted for equitable doctrines, and
concludes that this should not be the case. Thus, unless the issue
involves the application of fundamental public policy, mandatory
forum laws or the procedure of the forum, equitable doctrines of
any country should be subject to the same choice of law analysis
like other principles of substantive law. The book then analyses
equitable doctrines within the traditional choice of law categories
of property, contracts, torts and restitution in three steps:
first, many equitable doctrines may be regarded as substantive and
not procedural; secondly, property and obligations issues raised by
equitable doctrines may be segregated; and thirdly, by considering
the functions of the respective doctrines, equitable obligations
may be analysed as contractual (or based on agreement), tortious
(or based on wrongs) or restitutionary (or based on unjust
enrichment).
Compiled in honour of Bernard Rudden, this is a book of essays in comparative law centering on the contribution which comparative analysis can make to the core subjects of private law, namely property and obligations. The essays are contributed by leading academics from all over the world, all of whom owe an intellectual debt to the honorand.
This classic book by one of America's preeminent legal theorists is concerned with the conflict between the goals of justice and economic efficiency in the allocation of risk, especially risk pertaining to safety.
"This important student text deals with all aspects of common law
obligations, including the principles of the law of obligations,
remedies, negation of liability and specific obligations. The books
draws out the common themes that exist between traditional tort and
contract courses whilst elements pertaining to the law of
restitution are also included.This new edition takes account of
statutory developments and new relevant case law since the previous
edition and keeps the reader up to date with major changes in the
areas of economic loss in negligence and undue influence/economic
duress."
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. 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 common European law of torts. The insights gained from the comparative analysis also offer a guidance to greater harmonisation in the future. It is destined to become a landmark in the area of comparative law in general, and comparative torts in particular.
This collection of original essays on the theory of tort law brings together a number of the world's leading legal philosophers and tort scholars to examine the vital conjunctions of tort law and philosophy. This is a truly Anglo-American production, with five essays from the leading Oxford scholars and a dozen of the top American, Canadian and Israeli writers.
The 'Frontiers of Liability' is the title of a series of high-level
seminars held in All Souls College, Oxford during 1993 and 1994.
Drawing together top academics, practitioners and judges, these
seminars have sought to identify current trends in English law and
have provided a forum for experts to give their assessment of how
the law will develop in the future. The papers produced for the
first four seminars were reproduced in volume 1 of 'Frontiers of
Liability'. The next four seminars and the comments made by the
distinguished rapporteurs are reproduced in this volume. These
essays will be of interest to anyone concerned with international
sales, the law of contract, tort and restitution, and equity and
trusts.
Throughout much of the history of political philosophy, many of the
great philosophers begin their work with an investigation of
private law. Why is this? And why is the central focus of our
modern concern, the state, examined so late in their works? This
book suggests an answer to these and related questions. It reveals
that there are two general ways of thinking about the legal and the
political: the modern which sees all through the lens of the state,
and the traditional which begins with individuals and with the
normative relations that exist between them building only slowly
towards the community and the state. In the modern view, private
law is understood as a method for achieving certain social goals.
As such, it can be overlooked by political philosophy. For the
traditional view, on the other hand, private law is of central
philosophical importance, because it is there that we observe a
society's enunciation of its most fundamental political and legal
values. Arguing that an understanding of the traditional view is
essential to an understanding of private law and political life,
this book highlights how the modern conception is seriously
distorting in this regard. A story unfolds throughout the chapters:
the story of the growth and decline of the traditional view in
political and legal thought. It challenges the modern fixation with
the state, arguing for a return to the traditional view of legal
and political community.
Private law governs our most pervasive relationships with other
people: the wrongs we do to one another, the property we own and
exclude from others' use, the contracts we make and break, and the
benefits realized at another's expense that we cannot justly
retain. The major rules of private law are well known, but how they
are organized, explained, and justified is a matter of fierce
debate by lawyers, economists, and philosophers. Ernest Weinrib
made a seminal contribution to the understanding of private law
with his first book, The Idea of Private Law. In it, he argued that
there is a special morality intrinsic to private law: the morality
of corrective justice. By understanding the nature of corrective
justice we understand the purpose of private law - which is simply
to be private law. In this new book Weinrib takes up and develops
his account of corrective justice, its nature, and its role in
understanding the law. He begins by setting out the conceptual
components of corrective justice, drawing a model of a moral
relationship between two equals and the rights and duties that
exist between them. He then explains the significance of corrective
justice for various legal contexts: for the grounds of liability in
negligence, contract, and unjust enrichment; for the relationship
between right and remedy; for legal education; for the comparative
understanding of private law; and for the compatibility of
corrective justice with state support for the poor. Combining legal
and philosophical analysis, Corrective Justice integrates a
concrete and wide-ranging treatment of legal doctrine with a
unitary and comprehensive set of theoretical ideas. Alongside the
revised edition of The Idea of Private Law, it will be essential
reading for all academics, lawyers, and students engaged in
understanding the foundations of private law.
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