Law Commons^™

Duty Rules, David Owen

Vanderbilt Law Review

Few principles are more fundamentally important to modern society than duty. As obligation to oneself and others-to one's family, friends, neighbors, business associates, clients, customers, community, nation, and God-duty is the thread that binds humans to the world, to the communities in which they live. Duty constrains and channels human behavior in a socially responsible way before the fact, and it provides a basis for judging the propriety of behavior thereafter. Duty flows from millennia of social customs, philosophy, and religion. And duty is the overarching concept of the law.

Duty is central to the law of torts. Negligence law …