Recognizing Wrongs

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Civil wrongs and civil rights -- Against the grain -- Rules, duties, rights, and rights of action -- The principle of civil recourse : a defense -- Damages as redress -- Moral luck, strict liability, and victim standing : three features of tortious wrongdoing -- Dual instrumentalism -- Dual constructivism -- Civil recourse in the modern world -- Applications : the duty of care, design defects, and internet libel.

"Recognizing Wrongs is about tort law, also commonly known as "personal injury law." The book's central thesis is that tort law fulfills a basic obligation that government owes to each of us: to provide law that defines and proscribes a special class of wrongs - wrongs that involve one person mistreating another - and to provide a means for victims of such wrongs to obtain redress from those who have wronged them. This book aims to recover the traditional understanding of tort law by helping readers to recognize what it is all about. It does so by offering a systematic statement of a theory now known in academic circles as "civil recourse theory." In providing a comprehensive statement of that theory, the book aims to unseat both the leading philosophical theory of tort law - corrective justice theory, as put forward by Jules Coleman, John Gardner, Arthur Ripstein, Ernest Weinrib, and others - as well as the economic approach favored by scholars such as Guido Calabresi and Richard Posner"-- Provided by publisher.