Vicarious liability is controversial: a principle of strict liability in an area dominated by fault-based liability. By making an innocent party pay compensation for the torts of another, it can also appear unjust. Yet it is a principle found in all Western legal systems, be they civil law or common law. Despite uncertainty as to its justifications, it is accepted as necessary. In our modern global economy, we are unlikely to understand its meaning and rationale through study of one legal system alone. Using her considerable experience as a comparative tort lawyer, Paula Giliker examines the principle of vicarious liability (or, to a civil lawyer, liability for the acts of others) in England and Wales, Australia, Canada, France and Germany, and with reference to legal systems in countries such as the United States, New Zealand and Spain.

Cases and Commentary on Tort features a range of extracts from significant cases which form a useful portfolio of primary sources for undergraduate students. The authors' succinct and engaging commentary offers insight into the basic principles of tort law and highlights the role the key cases play in the wider context of the subject. The extracts have been carefully selected to ensure they are of a manageable length while also providing an accurate picture of the main principles of tort law, making this an ideal text for students studying this area of law for the first time. Questions at the end of chapters prompt further discussion of the wider issues involved, while annotated further reading lists highlight useful texts and articles for students wishing to undertake more in-depth study in areas of particular interest.

Tort Wars brings together the diverse and usually insufficiently related strands of tort law and treats the moral, economic, and systemic problems running through those strands with a single analysis and theory. In that tort law employs theory at all, it is typically theory measured against notions of corrective justice or appeals to utility. Both have severe prescriptive restrictions and limited explanatory power and often stray from any useful description of tort cases in the courts. Tort Wars looks at the nature of dispute resolution techniques, criticizes the blase justice and more esoteric utility theory, and examines the problems of both the legal academy and the veracity vacuum in the courtroom. Further, it explores the conceptual differences between tort and contract, locating contract as a subset of tort. It uses examples drawn from the edges of tort law in an attempt to measure central cases by the marginal ones and to provide a barometer of emerging legal and social change, achieved through imposing an individualized peace.

Tort Wars brings together the diverse and usually insufficiently related strands of tort law and treats the moral, economic, and systemic problems running through those strands with a single analysis and theory. In that tort law employs theory at all, it is typically theory measured against notions of corrective justice or appeals to utility. Both have severe prescriptive restrictions and limited explanatory power and often stray from any useful description of tort cases in the courts. Tort Wars looks at the nature of dispute resolution techniques, criticizes the blase justice and more esoteric utility theory, and examines the problems of both the legal academy and the veracity vacuum in the courtroom. Further, it explores the conceptual differences between tort and contract, locating contract as a subset of tort. It uses examples drawn from the edges of tort law in an attempt to measure central cases by the marginal ones and to provide a barometer of emerging legal and social change, achieved through imposing an individualized peace.

Rights and obligations can arise, amongst other things, in tort or in unjust enrichment. Simone Degeling deals with the phenomenon whereby a stranger to litigation is entitled to participate in the fruits of that litigation. Two prominent examples of this phenomenon are the carer, entitled to share in the fund of damages recovered by a victim of tort, and the indemnity insurer, entitled to participate in the fruits of the insured's claim against the wrongdoer. Degeling demonstrates that both are rights raised to reverse unjust enrichment. Careful examination of these two categories reveals the existence of a novel policy-motivated unjust factor called the policy against accumulation. Degeling argues that this is an unjust factor of broad application, applying to configurations other than that of the carer and the indemnity insurer. This will interest restitution and tort lawyers, both academic and practitioner, as well as academic institutions and court libraries.

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. Amongst the questions they address are the following: how are the notions at the core of tort practice (such as responsibility, fault, negligence, due care, and duty to repair) to be understood? Is an explanation based on a conception of justice feasible? How are concerns of distributive and corrective justice related? What amounts to an adequate explanation 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.