Law Commons^™

The Restatement Of Torts And The Courts, Jack B. Weinstein

Vanderbilt Law Review

Primarily through tort law the courts compensate those injured by others. Secondary aspects of our work such as deterrence or forcing tortfeasors to pay the full social costs of their activities are minor and collateral. For jurors focusing on compensation, tort law has only two operative elements: damage and cause. It is the law professor and the judge, through decisions on motions and instructions, who are the main Restatement consumers. Emphasizing mass torts, I will make three points relevant to those considering the health of tort law.

First: Tort law in its least inhibitory principle is useful be- cause of …

Respecting Deference: Conceptualizing Skidmore Within The Architecture Of Chevron, Jim Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article addresses critically the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Christensen v. Harris County, 120 S.Ct. 1655 (2000), for standards of judicial review of agency interpretations of law. Christensen is a notable case in the administrative law area because it purports to clarify application of the deference doctrine first articulated in Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134 (1944). By reviving this doctrine, the case narrows application of the predominant approach to deference articulated in Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), thus reducing the level of deference in …