Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Law
Duty In Tort Law: An Economic Approach, Keith N. Hylton
Duty In Tort Law: An Economic Approach, Keith N. Hylton
Faculty Scholarship
Theories of tort law have focused on the breach and causation components of negligence, saying little if anything about duty. This paper provides a positive economic theory of duty doctrine. The theory that best explains duty doctrines in tort law is the same as the theory that explains strict liability doctrine. The core function of both sets of doctrines is to regulate the frequency or scale of activities that have substantial external effects. Strict liability aims to suppress or tax activities that carry unusually large external costs. Duty doctrines, especially those relieving actors of a duty of care, serve several …
Property Rules And Liability Rules, Once Again, Keith N. Hylton
Property Rules And Liability Rules, Once Again, Keith N. Hylton
Faculty Scholarship
In recent years, new articles presenting rigorous analyses of bargaining incentives have overturned some of the fundamental claims made by Calabresi and Melamed in their seminal article on property rules and liability rules published in 1972. In particular, the proposition that property rules are socially preferable to liability rules when transaction costs are low appears to be either no longer valid or severely weakened under the new analyses. This paper reexamines the property rule versus liability rule question in light of the contributions of the recent bargaining theory literature. In contrast to this literature, I find that the fundamental propositions …