Philosophical Foundations of Tort Law

This collection of nineteen original 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 rights-based and economic theories of legal responsibility. One group of essays examines how intent and blameworthiness bear on responsibility for harm, while another explores how causation interconnects responsibility and harm. Some essays probe philosophically into the great divides separating the law of torts from the law of contracts and the law of crimes, a number inquire into the types of harm properly redressable in tort, and one examines the role of a victim's fault in responsibility theory. 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.