Law Commons^™

A Pragmatic Approach To Improving Tort Law, Catharine P. Wells

Vanderbilt Law Review

In 1923, a group of lawyers, judges, and teachers met to consider the desirability of forming the American Law Institute ("ALP) and of undertaking its ongoing project of restating the law. They began their deliberations with the recognition that the legal system had serious failings' and that the public was generally dissatisfied and skeptical about the justice it dispensed. The central difficulty with the system of justice, they thought, was the fact that legal outcomes were so uncertain. Uncertainty, they argued, made the legal system cumbersome, expensive and inaccessible; it denied justice to litigants and discouraged legitimate activities. The reasons …

Scientific Uncertainty And Causation In Tort Law, Mark Geistfeld

Vanderbilt Law Review

Tort cases involving scientific uncertainty frequently present courts with a difficult causation issue. In the paradigmatic case, the available scientific evidence indicates that a substance might be hazardous, but does not establish that the substance is hazardous.' When presented with such evidence, courts must decide whether the plaintiff has adequately proven that her injury was tortiously caused by the substance.

This causal issue potentially arises whenever we do not fully understand how a substance interacts with the body and produces an adverse health outcome. We do not, for example, adequately understand the etiology of cancer.2 To assess whether a substance …

Interpretive Construction, Systemic Consistency, And Criterial Norms In Tort Law, Jody David Armour

Vanderbilt Law Review

These brief remarks focus on the concepts of intent and recklessness in tort and how a Restatement should approach them. They center on three jurisprudential issues that are raised in any discussion of the basic building block concepts of a body of law, namely, the role of interpretive construction in the application of such concepts, the value of systemic consistency between such concepts and similar ones in other bodies of law, and, finally, the need to determine which concepts are criterial and which are merely evidential. They reflect my commentaries as a member of the panel on intent at the …

Removing Emotional Harm From The Core Of Tort Law, Martha Chamallas

Vanderbilt Law Review

My commentary is directed to one important feature of the new Restatement (Third) of Torts: General Principles (Discussion Draft) ("Discussion Draft")-the decision to remove liability for emotional harm from the core of tort law. As a Torts professor, I am very attracted to the Discussion Draft because to a large extent it tracks the way I structure and teach torts to first year students. It reflects what Professors Jack Balkin and Sanford Levinson describe as the pedagogical canon in torts, by highlighting those topics and subtopics that most professors emphasize in their scaled- down Torts course and including the material …

The Unexpected Persistence Of Negligence, 1980-2000, G. Edward White

Vanderbilt Law Review

In Tort Law in America: An Intellectual History, I made the general argument that the development of tort law in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had been more influenced by ideas than previous scholars had suggested.' In making that argument I employed the terms "ideas" and "influence" at multiple levels of generality. The argument would perhaps have been better under- stood if I had more clearly particularized the specificity and generality of my claims about ideas as causal agents.

At the most specific level, I employed the term "ideas" to refer to particular doctrinal and policy proposals for tort law …

The Risk Concept On Modern Tort Map: An Analytical Approach To English Law, Mashael Alhajeri

Mashael Alhajeri

No abstract provided.

Quest For Fairness In Compensating Victims Of September 11, The, Robert L. Rabin

Cleveland State Law Review

Aside from natural disasters, when tragedy strikes - taking its toll in fatalities and serious injuries - we ordinarily look to the tort system for redress. Tort is not the exclusive form of redress, of course, in this era of private insurance and government disability programs. But still, it remains our most highly visible mechanism for assigning responsibility and providing compensation. In this Article, I will begin by describing the approach to compensation taken in the Victim Compensation Fund. I will then discuss the implementing regulations promulgated by the Special Master appointed under the Fund. Next, I will offer a …

Kiss And Tell: Making The Case For The Tortious Transmission Of Herpes And Human Papillomavirus, Michele L. Mekel

Michele L Mekel

Recognizing theories of recovery for a tort committed an estimated 6 million times per year in the United States alone at an annual cost in excess of $4 billion is logical--if not imperative. Not all jurisdictions, however, recognize theories of recovery when the tort in question is the wrongful transmission of herpes and/or human papillomavirus ("HPV"), two of the most common, incurable sexually transmitted diseases ("STDs") in America. Nevertheless, in Deuschle v. Jobe, the Court of Appeals for the Western District of Missouri took a significant step by acknowledging an unmarried sexual partner's right to bring negligence and intentional tort …