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Mental Disabilities And Duty In Negligence Law: Will Neuroscience Reform Tort Doctrine?, Jean Eggen Sep 2014

Mental Disabilities And Duty In Negligence Law: Will Neuroscience Reform Tort Doctrine?, Jean Eggen

Jean M. Eggen

Recent developments in neuroscience may contribute to some long-needed changes in negligence law. One negligence rule in need of reform is the duty rule allowing physical disabilities to be considered in determining whether a party acted negligently, but disallowing mental disabilities for adult tortfeasors. Further, this bifurcated rule applies imposes an objective standard only on adults alleged to have acted negligently. A subjective standard applies to all parties in intentional torts and to children in negligence actions. Courts justify the bifurcated rule for adults on policy grounds, but these policy underpinnings are no longer valid in contemporary society. More accurate …


Is Negligence A First Cousin To Intentionality? Lay Conceptions Of Negligence And Its Relationship To Intentionality, Narina Nunez Dec 2013

Is Negligence A First Cousin To Intentionality? Lay Conceptions Of Negligence And Its Relationship To Intentionality, Narina Nunez

Narina Nunez

In three studies, we examined lay conceptions of negligence and how they are used when making judgments about actors’ intentions, negligence, and blame. Study 1 examined the extent to which participants agreed about what constitutes negligence and accidents. After finding a high level of agreement between participants, Study 2 explored the features that defined participants’ folk understanding of negligence. Additionally, we examined if definitions of negligence overlapped with key features of definitions of intentionality proposed in the literature. Study 2 suggested there were some key overlapping features and differences between negligence and intentionality. Finally, Study 3 examined how two key …