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Books > Law > Laws of other jurisdictions & general law > Private, property, family law > Torts / delicts
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 select 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 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 malpractice and products
liability regimes. As such, the book provides an updated and
enriched framework for understanding the rules, the theories, the
styles of reasoning and the tort law cultures across the Atlantic.
The 2012 Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme (CICS) deals with
some 33,000 applications for compensation each year. It has, since
1964, been one of the principal means by which the state aims to
meet victims' expectations following an offence of violence, but it
also displays a clear doctrinal effort to differentiate 'deserving'
from 'undeserving' victims. Over much of the same period criminal
courts and agencies have enjoyed powers to order offenders to pay
compensation to their victims, most recently as an element of
restorative justice. Split into two parts, Criminal Injuries
Compensation is an authoritative analysis of the statutory
provisions governing these various remedies. Part One, State
Compensation, analyses the Scheme's defining provisions: what
constitutes 'a criminal injury', what persons and injuries may be
compensated, the rules governing the victim's own conduct and
character, the assessment of the award, and the procedures
governing applications, appeals and judicial review. Part Two,
Offender Compensation, analyses the conditions under which a
criminal court may make a compensation order as an element of its
sentencing decision, concluding with the potential of restorative
justice to deliver offender compensation to victims. The book also
touches on the wider political and criminal justice context of
compensation. Written and edited by an expert academic and
practitioner team, Criminal Injuries Compensation is an essential
text for all those with an interest in understanding the statutory,
judicial and administrative rules that govern state and offender
payment of compensation to victims of violent crime.
This casebook is organized to facilitate the study of law in the
first year of law school with a focus on the study of tort law in
particular. The text begins with an overview of tort law, pointing
out distinctions between tort law and other types of law. It then
covers intentional torts, negligence actions, and strict liability,
covering all topics in detail. The materials presented build on
foundational principles by exploring more advanced tort subjects
such as nuisance, products liability, and defamation and privacy
law. This versatile textbook includes classic cases as well as
contemporary cases relevant to today's students. In addition to
having discussion questions and hypotheticals throughout, the text
also includes graphics illustrating many of the principles covered
throughout the text. The text is available in both hardbound and
electronic format and features Internet links for the student's
use.
Tort law is often regarded as the clearest example of traditional
common law reasoning. Yet, in the past 40 years, the common law of
England and Wales has been subject to European influences as a
result of the introduction of the European Communities Act 1972
and, more recently, the implementation of the Human Rights Act 1998
in October 2000. EU Directives have led to changes to the law
relating to product liability, health and safety in the workplace,
and defamation, while Francovich liability introduces a new tort
imposing State liability for breach of EU law. The 1998 Act has led
to developments in privacy law and made the courts reconsider their
approach to public authority liability and freedom of expression in
defamation law. This book explores how English tort law has changed
as a result of Europeanisation - broadly defined as the influence
of European Union and European human rights law. It also analyses
how this influence has impacted on traditional common law
reasoning. Has Europeanisation led to changes to the common law
legal tradition or has the latter proved more resistant to change
than might have been expected?
Part II of The Humanity of Private Law charts a new course for
English private law in the twenty-first century. Part I set out the
vision of human flourishing that English private law has in mind in
seeking to promote its subjects' flourishing. Part II argues in
favour of a very different account of what human flourishing
involves, and explains what private law would look like were it to
base itself on this alternative vision of the nature of human
flourishing. This volume: sets out and evaluates different models
of what human flourishing involves; argues in favour of the view
that human flourishing involves being engaged in a quest to lead a
truthful life; explains in what ways a private law that sought to
foster this distinctive vision of human flourishing would be
different from English private law in its current state, in
particular with regard to: (i) tackling fraud; (ii) promoting
freedom of speech; (iii) preserving attention capacities; (iv)
protecting people from being subjected to degrading or hateful
treatment; and (v) enabling people to make a fresh start in their
lives; and, considers whether and when it would be legitimate for
the courts to transform English private law in the ways suggested
in this volume. Part II of The Humanity of Private Law is a radical
and prophetic book that is essential reading for anyone who is
interested in understanding the contribution private law can make
to our living in a society that promotes the flourishing of all its
members.
In 1992 a preventable explosion at the Westray Mine in Plymouth,
Nova Scotia, killed twenty-six miners. More than a decade later,
the government enacted Bill C-45, commonly known as the Westray
bill, to hold organizations criminally liable for seriously
injuring and killing workers and the public. In Still Dying for a
Living, Steven Bittle turns a critical eye on the Westray bill,
revealing how legal, economic, and cultural discourses surrounding
the bill downplayed the seriousness of workplace injury and death,
effectively characterizing these crimes as regrettable but largely
unavoidable accidents and, in the process, obscuring their
underlying causes.
Tort law is the body of law governing negligence, intentional
misconduct, and other wrongful acts for which civil actions can be
brought. The conventional wisdom is that the rules, concepts, and
structures of tort law are neutral and unbiased, free of
considerations of gender and race.
In The Measure of Injury, Martha Chamallas and Jennifer Wriggins
prove that tort law is anything but gender and race neutral.
Drawing on an in-depth analysis of case law ranging from the Jim
Crow South to the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, the authors
demonstrate that women and minorities have been under-compensated
in tort law and that traditional biases have resurfaced in updated
forms to perpetuate patterns of disparate recovery based on race
and gender. Grappling with tort theory, the intricacies of legal
doctrine and the practical effects of legal rules, The Measure of
Injury is a unique treatise on torts that uncovers the public and
cultural dimensions of this always-controversial domain of private
law.
Advancing a bold theory of the relevance of tort law in the fight
against human rights abuses, celebrated US law professor George
Fletcher here challenges the community of international lawyers to
think again about how they can use the Alien Tort Statute.
Beginning with an historical analysis Fletcher shows how tort and
criminal law originally evolved to deal with similar problems, how
tort came to be seen as primarily concerned with negligence and how
the Alien Tort Statute has helped establish the importance of tort
law in international cases. In a series of cases starting with
Filartiga and culminating most recently in Sosa, Fletcher shows how
torture cases led to the reawakening of the Alien Tort Statute,
changing US law and giving legal practitioners a tool with which to
assist victims of torture and other extreme human rights abuses.
This leads to an examination of Agent Orange and the possible
commission of war crimes in the course of its utilisation, and the
theory of liability for aiding and abetting the US military and
other military forces when they commit war crimes. The book
concludes by looking at the cutting-edge cases in this area,
particularly those involving liability for funding terrorism, and
the remedies available, particularly the potential offered by the
compensation chamber in the International Criminal Court.
Over the last 15 years, privacy actions have been recognised at
common law or in equity across common law jurisdictions, and
statutory privacy protections have proliferated. Apex courts are
now being called upon to articulate the law governing remedies,
including in high-profile litigation concerning phone hacking,
covert filming and release of personal information. Yet despite the
practical significance of the courts' approach to damages,
injunctions and other remedies for breach of privacy, very little
has been written on the topic. This book comprehensively analyses
these developments from a comparative perspective and provides
solutions to issues which are coming to light as higher courts
forge this remedial jurisprudence and practitioners look for
guidance. Significantly, the essays are important not only for what
they say about remedies, but also for the attention they give to
the nature of the new privacy actions, providing deep insights into
substantive law. The book includes contributions by academics,
practitioners and judges from Australia, Canada, England, New
Zealand and the United States, who are expert in the legal
disciplines implicated by privacy remedies, including torts,
equity, public law and conflict of laws. By bringing together this
range of perspectives, the book offers authoritative insights into
this cutting-edge topic. It will be essential reading for all those
seeking to understand and resolve the new issues associated with
privacy remedies.
This book addresses some of the most difficult and important
debates over injury and law now taking place in societies around
the world. The essays tackle the inescapable experience of injury
and its implications for social inequality in different cultural
settings. Topics include the tension between physical and
reputational injuries, the construction of human injuries versus
injuries to non-human life, virtual injuries, the normalization and
infliction of injuries on vulnerable victims, the question of
reparations for slavery, and the paradoxical degradation of victims
through legal actions meant to compensate them for their
disabilities. Authors include social theorists, social scientists
and legal scholars, and the subject matter extends to the Middle
East and Asia, as well as North America.
A woman terrified by the threats of a jilted suitor is denied
police protection. A workman collapses on the job and the employer
is slow to help him. A bully in a bar begins to carry out threats
of serious injury to a customer, after the bartender's
lackadaisical response. Springing from varied areas of human
activity, such cases occupy an important area of the legal
battleground called modern tort law. They also provide the basis
for a fascinating legal analysis by Marshall S. Shapo. Tort law is
an important social mediator of events surrounding personal
injuries. It impinges on many other areas of the law-those dealing
with crime, constitutional protections against government officials
and agencies, and property rights. Since litigated tort cases often
involve brutal treatment or accidents inflicting severe physical
harm, this area of the law generates much emotion and complex legal
doctrine. Shapo cuts through the emotion and the complexity to
present a view of these problems that is both legally sound and
intuitively appealing. His emphasis is on power relationships
between private citizens and other individuals, as well as between
private persons and governments and officials. He undertakes to
define power in a meaningful way as it relates to many tort issues
faced by ordinary citizens, and to make this definition precise by
constant reference to concrete cases. His particular focus is on an
age-old problem in tort law: the question of when a person has a
duty to aid another in peril. In analyzing a large number of cases
in this category, Shapo develops an analysis that blends
considerations of economic efficiency and humanitarian concern.
Recognizing that economic considerations are significant in
judicial analysis of these cases, he emphasizes elements that go
beyond a simple concern with efficiency, especially the ability of
one person to control another's actions or exposure to risk. These
considerations of power and corresponding dependence provide the
basis for Shapo's study of the duties of both private citizens and
governments to prevent injury to others. Calling on a broad range
of legal precedents, he also refers to social science research
dealing with the behavior of bystanders when fellow citizens are
under attack. Beyond his application of a power-based analysis to
litigation traditionally based in tort doctrine, Shapo offers some
speculative suggestions on the possible applicability of his views
to several controversial areas of welfare law: medical care,
municipal services, and educational standards. This book was
written with a view to readership by interested citizens as well as
legal scholars, judges, and practicing attorneys.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which
commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out
and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and
impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes
high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using
print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in
1951.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which
commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out
and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and
impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes
high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using
print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in
1951.
Over the last 15 years, privacy actions have been recognised at
common law or in equity across common law jurisdictions, and
statutory privacy protections have proliferated. Apex courts are
now being called upon to articulate the law governing remedies,
including in high-profile litigation concerning phone hacking,
covert filming and release of personal information. Yet despite the
practical significance of the courts' approach to damages,
injunctions and other remedies for breach of privacy, very little
has been written on the topic. This book comprehensively analyses
these developments from a comparative perspective and provides
solutions to issues which are coming to light as higher courts
forge this remedial jurisprudence and practitioners look for
guidance. Significantly, the essays are important not only for what
they say about remedies, but also for the attention they give to
the nature of the new privacy actions, providing deep insights into
substantive law. The book includes contributions by academics,
practitioners and judges from Australia, Canada, England, New
Zealand and the United States, who are expert in the legal
disciplines implicated by privacy remedies, including torts,
equity, public law and conflict of laws. By bringing together this
range of perspectives, the book offers authoritative insights into
this cutting-edge topic. It will be essential reading for all those
seeking to understand and resolve the new issues associated with
privacy remedies.
Lord Justice Jackson's retirement in March 2018 concluded a career
of almost 20 years on the bench. His judicial career has seen a
remarkable transformation of construction law, construction law
litigation and the litigation landscape more generally. Drawing the
Threads Together is a Festschrift which considers many of the
important developments in these areas during the Jackson era. The
Festschrift discusses most of the leading construction cases
decided by Lord Justice Jackson, with subject matter including
statutory adjudication, fitness for purpose obligations,
consideration, delays and extensions of time, liquidated damages,
time bar provisions, the prevention principle, neighbour rights,
limitation clauses, negligence, good faith, bonds and guarantees
and concurrent duties of care. It also includes a discussion of the
background to the Jackson Review of Civil Litigation Costs
(2009-2010) and its impact on litigation, as well as considering
the development of the Technology and Construction Court during and
subsequent to Mr Justice Jackson's tenure as judge in charge of
that court.
This collection of essays investigates the way in which modern
private law apportions responsibility between multiple parties who
are (or may be) responsible for the same legal event. It examines
both doctrines and principles that share responsibility between
plaintiffs and defendants, on the one hand, and between multiple
defendants, on the other. The doctrines examined include those
'originating' doctrines which operate to create shared liabilities
in the first place (such as vicarious and accessorial liability);
and, more centrally, those doctrines that operate to distribute the
liabilities and responsibilities so created. These include the
doctrine of contributory (comparative) negligence, joint and
several (solidary) liability, contribution, reimbursement, and
'proportionate' liability, as well as defences and principles of
equitable 'allowance' that permit both losses and gains to be
shared between parties to civil proceedings. The work also
considers the principles which apportion liability between multiple
defendants and insurers in cases in which the cause, or timing, of
a particular loss is hard to determine. The contributions to this
volume offer important perspectives on the law in the UK, USA,
Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as well as a number of civilian
jurisdictions. They explicate the main rules and trends and offer
critical insights on the growth and distribution of shared
responsibilities from a number of different perspectives -
historical, comparative, empirical, doctrinal and philosophical.
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