Torts Commons^™

Product Liability Law In The Federal Arena, Sherman Joyce

Seattle University Law Review

The law of product liability has been created by state judges and legislatures. Although not widely noticed, this tradition changed when Congress enacted the General Aviation Revitalization Act of 1994. That legislation established an eighteen-year statute of repose for claims brought by non-commercial passengers injured or killed in accidents involving light aircraft. Until that time, product liability law had been exclusively a function of state law. Nevertheless, product liability reform legislation has been the subject of extensive examination and scrutiny by Members of the United States Congress for one and a half decades. This Article analyzes the constitutional underpinnings for …

Testing Two Assumptions About Federalism And Tort Reform, Thomas A. Eaton, Susette M. Talarico

Scholarly Works

In, 1996 both the United States House of Representatives and Senate passed legislation that, if enacted, would preempt state tort laws in significant ways. Why would a Congress otherwise apparently committed to vesting states with greater policymaking autonomy call for federal control of tort law?

Tort policymaking has traditionally been done at the state level. One assumption underlying this distribution of power is that states are better able than the national government to fashion tort rules appropriate for local conditions and circumstances. In other words, states are thought to have a special competence in crafting tort rules responsive to local …

Sleeping With The Enemy: Combatting The Sexual Spread Of Hiv-Aids Through A Heightened Legal Duty, 29 J. Marshall L. Rev. 957 (1996), Eric L. Schulman

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Informed Consent And Patients' Rights In Japan, Robert B. Leflar

Robert B Leflar

This article analyzes the development of the concept of informed consent in the context of the culture and economics of Japanese medicine, and locates that development within the framework of the nation's civil law system. Part II sketches the cultural foundations of medical paternalism in Japan; explores the economic incentives (many of them administratively directed) that have sustained physicians' traditional dominant roles; and describes the judiciary's hesitancy to challenge physicians' professional discretion. Part III delineates the forces testing the paternalist model: the undermining of the physicians' personal knowledge of their patients that accompanies the shift from neighborhood clinic to high-tech …