This revised second edition of Comparative Tort Law offers an updated and enriched framework for analysing and understanding the current state of tort law around the world. Using a critical comparative methodology, it examines common issues such as causation, economic and non-economic damages, product and professional liability, and the relationship between tort law and crime, insurance and public welfare schemes. Featuring contributions from international experts, this book also provides a comprehensive comparative assessment of tort law cultures, contextualising them within the legal systems and societies that sustain them. Chapters cover many jurisdictions often overlooked in the mainstream literature, and explore illuminating case studies from tort systems in Europe, the US, Latin America, Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, including new chapters specifically discussing tort law in Brazil, India and Russia. Comparative Tort Law is a critical tool for students, scholars and academic researchers, especially those specialising in tort and comparative law. It will also be useful to policymakers, practitioners and judges, in particular those dealing with differing tort law systems.

Pure economic loss is one of the most-discussed problems in the fields of tort and contract. How do we understand the various differences and similarities between these systems and what is the extent to which there is a common-core of agreement on this question? This book takes a comparative approach to the subject, exploring the principles, policies and rules governing tortious liability for pure economic loss in a number of countries and legal systems across the world. The countries covered are USA, Canada, Japan, Israel, South Africa, Japan, Romania, Croatia, Denmark and Poland, with the contributors taking a comparative fact-based approach through the use of hypothetical problems to analyze and then summarize the individual country's tort approach. Using a fact-based questionnaire, a tested taxonomy, and a sophisticated comparative law methodology, the authors convincingly demonstrate that there are liberal, pragmatic and conservative regimes throughout the world. The recoverability of pure economic loss poses a generic question for these legal systems - it is not just a civil law versus common law issue. It will be of interest to students and academics studying tort law and comparative law in the different countries covered.

Comparative Tort Law: Global Perspectives provides a framework for analyzing and understanding the current state of tort law in most of the world's legal systems. The book examines tort law theories and cultures through a comparative methodology. It looks at general issues at play throughout the globe, such as causation, economic and non-economic damages, product and professional liability, as well as the relationship between tort law and crime, insurance, and public welfare schemes. This collection of essays written by tort law experts from around the world also offers a comprehensive comparative assessment of tort law rules, and consideration for the cultural contexts in which tort laws live, covering many jurisdictions that are usually neglected by mainstream debates and literature. Insightful case studies analyze specific features of selected tort systems in Europe, USA, Latin America, East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. This path-breaking, though accessible book is a critical tool for students, policymakers, practitioners, scholars and academic researchers, especially tort law and comparative law specialists. Contributors: A. Basir Bin Mohamad, M. Bussani, E. Buyuksagis, D.N. Dagbanja, G. Dari-Mattiacci, M. de Morpurgo, M. Dyson, I. Ebert, E.A. Engle, J. Gordley, H. Jiang, E. Hondius, M. Infantino, D. Jutras, E. Matsumoto, V.V. Palmer, F. Parisi, M. Reimann, A.J. Sebok, S.D. Sugarman, S.C. Symeonides, F. Werro

We can only claim to understand another legal system when we know the context surrounding the positive law in which lawyers are trained. To avoid ethnocentricity and superficiality, we must go beyond judicial decisions, doctrinal writings and the black-letter law of codes and statutes and probe the 'deeper structures' where law meets cultural, political, socio-economic factors. It is only when we acquire such awareness and knowledge of the critical factors affecting both the backgrounds and implications of rules that it becomes possible to control the present and possibly future developments of the world's legal institutions. This collection of essays aims to provide the reader with a fundamental understanding of the dynamic relationship between the law and its cultural, political and socio-economic context.

Pure economic loss is one of the most-discussed problems in the fields of tort and contract. How do we understand the various differences and similarities between these systems and what is the extent to which there is a common-core of agreement on this question? This book takes a comparative approach to the subject, exploring the principles, policies and rules governing tortious liability for pure economic loss in a number of countries and legal systems across the world. The countries covered are USA, Canada, Japan, Israel, South Africa, Japan, Romania, Croatia, Denmark and Poland, with the contributors taking a comparative fact-based approach through the use of hypothetical problems to analyze and then summarize the individual country's tort approach. Using a fact-based questionnaire, a tested taxonomy, and a sophisticated comparative law methodology, the authors convincingly demonstrate that there are liberal, pragmatic and conservative regimes throughout the world. The recoverability of pure economic loss poses a generic question for these legal systems - it is not just a civil law versus common law issue. It will be of interest to students and academics studying tort law and comparative law in the different countries covered.

This book examines national reports on contract law in each of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) in order to provide a comparative analysis. It then establishes common principles, where possible, as well as a set of general “soft law” principles governing international commercial contracts in these countries. The importance of commercial transactions in the BRICS countries is rapidly growing, yet differences in contract law among these countries can lead to misunderstandings and disputes. The rapid development of the BRICS instruments (and the legal implications of their use) suggests the need to address common legal issues that could harm the continued development of the BRICS economies. Contract law represents one of the core areas in which this process can take place. Addressing the salient legal issues within the BRICS discourse requires a comprehensive, comparative approach that explores the different solutions provided by each member country, in order to identify similarities and convergences. This process may ultimately help to reduce the legal obstacles to, and indirect costs of, cross-border transactions by offering a transparent and predictable legal environment for any future attempt at adopting common legal instruments.

Pure economic loss is one of the most discussed and controversial legal issues in Europe today, raising complex questions which affect the law of tort and contract. How far can tort liability expand without imposing excessive burdens upon individual activity? Should the recovery of pure economic loss be the domain principally of the law of contract? And is there a common core of principles, policies and rules governing tortious liability for pure economic loss in Europe? Originally published in 2003, this is a comprehensive study of the subject, using a fact-based comparative method and in-depth research into the laws of thirteen European countries. Following a historical and analytical introduction to economic loss, experts from most European countries consider how their national systems would deal with the same practical problem, highlighting similarities and differences in a range of comprehensive issues. This is the third publication of the Common Core of European Private Law.

This book examines national reports on contract law in each of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) in order to provide a comparative analysis. It then establishes common principles, where possible, as well as a set of general "soft law" principles governing international commercial contracts in these countries. The importance of commercial transactions in the BRICS countries is rapidly growing, yet differences in contract law among these countries can lead to misunderstandings and disputes. The rapid development of the BRICS instruments (and the legal implications of their use) suggests the need to address common legal issues that could harm the continued development of the BRICS economies. Contract law represents one of the core areas in which this process can take place. Addressing the salient legal issues within the BRICS discourse requires a comprehensive, comparative approach that explores the different solutions provided by each member country, in order to identify similarities and convergences. This process may ultimately help to reduce the legal obstacles to, and indirect costs of, cross-border transactions by offering a transparent and predictable legal environment for any future attempt at adopting common legal instruments.

We can only claim to understand another legal system when we know the context surrounding the positive law in which lawyers are trained. To avoid ethnocentricity and superficiality, we must go beyond judicial decisions, doctrinal writings and the black-letter law of codes and statutes and probe the 'deeper structures' where law meets cultural, political, socio-economic factors. It is only when we acquire such awareness and knowledge of the critical factors affecting both the backgrounds and implications of rules that it becomes possible to control the present and possibly future developments of the world's legal institutions. This collection of essays aims to provide the reader with a fundamental understanding of the dynamic relationship between the law and its cultural, political and socio-economic context.

How far can tort liability expand without imposing excessive burdens upon individual activity? This comprehensive study of the subject uses a fact-based comparative method and in-depth research into the laws of thirteen European countries. Many events result in pure economic loss, such as a business being idled by the cut of electricity cables. This controversial issue raises questions which affect the law of tort and contract.

European private law is in the making. Many scholarly and official projects tackle the many issues that unfold in the path of a more uniform European legal culture. None of such projects has been as thorough and patient in trying to develop a general knowledge on how things are in the early-21st century in the landscape of European private law as the "Common Core of European Private Law Project", launched in Trento, Italy in 1993 with the direct involvement of the Late Professor R.B. Schlesinger. Within the Common Core Project, over 200 professionals apply a painstaking comparative analysis of European legal systems in the domain of contracts, property and torts. Every year in Trento leading scholars address the plenary session where the active participants convene to discuss methodological and practical problems that emerge from their collective comparative effort. This book is a collection of the views of the importance and stakes of the making of European Private Law as presented in the papers delivered at the Trento plenary sessions.