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National Geo-Graphics: The New "Federalism Function" Of American Tort Law, Riaz Tejani

San Diego Law Review

“Community” was once the wellspring of norms governing risk, harm, and compensation. Today, people, goods, and information move at such high speed across such wide distances that markets come to replace community as the measure of socially “reasonable” conduct. Alongside this rise of mass-market industrial and media actors, American tort law has experienced unprecedented influence of national rules upon once purely state common law doctrines. Thus far the shift has been only partial—through constitutional rights and federal preemption, it has impacted certain industries such as bioengineering but left untouched others such as medical care. Critics of this partial federalization espouse …