Moral theories of torts: Their scope and limits: Part I

One approach to legal theory is to provide some sort of rational reconstruction of all or of a large body of the common law. For philosophers of law this has usually meant trying to rationalize a body of law under one or another principle of justice. This paper explores the efforts of the leading tort theorists to provide a moral basis — for the law of torts. The paper is divided into two parts. In the first part I consider and reject the view that tort law is best understood as falling either within the ambit of the principle of retributive justice, a comprehensive theory of moral responsibility, or an ideal of fairness inherent in the idea that one should impose on others only those risks others impose on one. The second part of the paper distinguishes among various conceptions of corrective or compensatory justice and considers arguments — including previous arguments by the author himself — to the effect that tort law is best understood as rooted in principles of corrective justice. This paper argues that although the use of principles of justice may render defensible many (but by no means all) of the claims to repair and to liability recognized in torts, it cannot explain why we have adopted a tort system as the approach to vindicating those claims. Some other principle — probably not one of justice — is needed to explain why it is that the victims claims to repair is satisfied by having his losses shifted to his injurer — rather than through some other means of doing so. The paper concludes that the law of torts cannot be understood — in the sense of being given a rational reconstruction — under any one principle of morality.     

Aristotle's Forms of Justice

Abstract. In Aristotle's account, corrective and distributive justice are not (as they are today) particular substantive ideals, but are rather the formal patterns that inhere in interactions and in the legal arrangements that regulate them. Corrective and distributive justice are the structures of ordering internal to transactions and distributions, respectively. The Aristotelian. forms of justice thus constitute the rationality immanent to the relation ships of mutually external beings. This article stresses Aristotle's formalism, contrasting it to modem instrumental conceptions of legal rationality, and defending it against Kelsen's allegations of emptiness. The article concludes with the suggestion that corrective justice, as the conceptual pattern that makes private law what it is, can be considered the formal and final cause of private law.     

Moral theories of torts: Their scope and limits: Part II

One approach to legal theory is to provide some sort of rational reconstruction of all or of a large body of the common law. For philosophers of law this has usually meant trying to rationalize a body of law under one or another principle of justice. This paper explores the efforts of the leading tort theorists to provide a moral basis - in the sense of rational reconstruction based on alleged moral principles - for the law of torts. The paper is divided into two parts. In the first part I consider and reject the view that tort law is best understood as falling either within the ambit of the principle of retributive justice, a comprehensive theory of moral responsibility, or an ideal of fairness inherent in the idea that one should impose on others only those risks others impose on one. The second part of the paper distinguishes among various conceptions of corrective or compensatory justice and considers arguments — including previous ones by the author himself — to the effect that tort law is best understood as rooted in principles of corrective justice. This paper argues that although the principles of justice may render defensible many (but by no means all) of the claims to repair and to liability recognized in torts, it cannot explain why we have adopted a tort system as the approach to vindicating those claims. Some other principle — probably not one of justice — is needed to explain why it is that the victim's claim to repair is satisfied by having his losses shifted to his injurer — rather than through some other means of doing so. The paper concludes that the law of torts cannot be understood — in the sense of being given a rational reconstruction — under any one principle of morality.     

What is Tort Law For? Part 1. The Place of Corrective Justice

In this paper I discuss the proposal that the law of torts exists to do justice, more specifically corrective justice, between the parties to a tort case. My aims include clarifying the proposal and defending it against some objections (as well as saving it from some defences that it could do without). Gradually the paper turns to a discussion of the rationale for doing corrective justice. I defend what I call the ‘continuity thesis’ according to which at least part of the rationale for doing corrective justice is to mitigate one’s wrongs, including one’s torts. I try to show how much of the law of torts this thesis helps to explain, but also what it leaves unexplained. In the process I show (what I will discuss in a later companion paper) that ‘corrective justice’ cannot be a complete answer to the question of what tort law is for.     

司法中的伦理解释及其限度——以美国宪法为分析样本

司法中的伦理解释本质上是一种立基于正当性的价值论解释方法，它要求解释者在法律文本语义的最大化范围内，选择和适用最合乎法的制度伦理的含义。伦理解释具有基础性、历史性、体系性和开放性等基本特征，这些特征都是由它所要表达的法的制度伦理赋予并在具体解释方法中展开与呈现的。伦理解释具有局限性：一方面，对法的制度伦理的辨识往往非常复杂，具有不确定性，这就会导致依托制度伦理来解释法律的客观性、正当性发生危机；另一方面，即或已经明确了法的制度伦理，但对它的维系与坚持也具有相当的难度，特别是当法官的个人正义观与法的制度伦理发生冲突时，难度更大，在极端情况下，甚至会使法律的伦理解释成为不可能完成的任务。     

Tort, Insurance and Incoherence

Some commentators have doubted whether, as is generally believed, liability insurance has had a significant expansionary effect on the law of tort. This article contends that the common assumption is, indeed, correct, and the crucial influence of insurance is clearly seen in the recent cases of Vowles v Evans and Gwilliam v West Herts NHS Trust . Once this has been acknowledged, the consequent radical incoherence in the basis of tort law needs to be confronted. The argument here is that only through faithful adherence to principles of individual responsibility and corrective justice, inherent as these are within the structure of tort law, can we hope to preserve coherence in the law of tort.     

A Deferential Role for Efficiency Theory in Analysing Causation-Based Tort Law

This paper argues for a reorientation in our thinking concerning the relationship between causation and efficiency in the design of tort law. The main proposition is that efficiency theory has a significant but deferential role to play in understanding appropriate tort law rules in countries where a corrective justice purpose is fundamental to the tort system.     

Street‐Level Tort Law: The Bureaucratic Justice of Liability Decision‐Making

Most legal scholarship on tort focuses primarily on judicial decisions, but this represents only a limited aspect of tortious liability. The vast majority of decisions concerning tortious liability are made by bureaucrats. Unavoidably then, there are two tiers of justice in tort law. This article focuses on the lower tier – bureaucratic decision‐making – arguing that the justice of bureaucratic decisions on tort should be considered on its own terms and not by judicial standards. We develop the notion of bureaucratic justice, applying a normative framework originally set out in relation to public administration. This enables an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of different ways of bureaucratically determining liability claims in tort. The regimes discussed concern the liability of public authorities, but decision makers comprise both state and non‐state actors and the bureaucratic justice framework is, in principle, applicable to understand and evaluate the liability of both public and private actors.     

Retracing One’s Steps: Searching for the Ethics of Legal Interpretation

The article discusses the problem of interpretation in law. Are there some criteria by which we can distinguish a good interpretation from a bad one, interpretation from over-interpretation? It is argued in this article that there is always a choice in defining the meaning of a text and this choice can be seen as an ethical one. This article thus studies the question of limits of interpretation by focusing on the ethical elements of interpretation. It is argued here that legal interpretation contains a requirement of justice that shapes the responsibility that the interpreter carries for his choices of meaning. Therefore the ethical elements of interpretation are especially pressing in the interpretation of legal texts.     

论普通法的“宏大风格”

普通法的宏大风格是美国著名现实主义法学家卡尔·卢埃林提出的旨在取代形式主义法学的一种新的法学理论。这一理论认为,法官承担着双重义务,既要执行法律,又要追求公平、正义;如何平衡和协调这两种义务是一门高超的司法艺术。强调法官的情境感悟,主张灵活解释法律,关注规则背后的立法理由,坚持对规则的适用不得超出规范目的,是这一理论的核心思想。     

Correlativity

In a celebrated article, published nearly a century ago, Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld endeavored to elucidate the various types of jural relations. Hohfeld’s scheme has been justly regarded as a seminal contribution to analytical jurisprudence, and has stimulated lively debate since. This Essay aims to refute one of Hohfeld’s fundamental and most influential theses: the axiom of right–duty correlativity. To do so, it employs the simplest refutation strategy in first-order logic, namely providing a valid counterexample. Part I discusses earlier attempts to do likewise, and explains why they failed. For the most part, previous illustrations of ostensibly standalone rights or standalone duties neglected relevant parties who could owe the correlative duties or hold the correlative rights, respectively. Part II puts forward a simple argument: There are abstract duties in private law that ban certain types of conduct without reference to specific victims. Those duties are not necessarily correlative with rights, although their breach may generate secondary duties with corresponding rights. In particular, tort law allows plaintiffs to recover for harm caused by breach of duty that occurred before they acquired legal personality. This is tantamount to recognizing duties that are not correlative with rights, and therefore invalidates the correlativity axiom.     

侵权责任法与特别法及司法解释关系的法解释学思考

在制定侵权责任法的过程中,应考虑到法解释的地位和作用,处理好侵权责任法与特别法及司法解释的关系。制定侵权责任法必须遵循一般法与特别法关系的法理,对侵权责任的一般问题和侵权责任的基本类型做出一般性规定,无特别法规定的,应做出比较全面的规定;正确处理与协调一般类型规定与特别法规定的关系。处理好与司法解释的关系,一是处理好侵权责任法与现有有效适用的司法解释的关系,二是处理好侵权责任法出台之后通过司法解释贯彻实施的问题。     

医患关系是一种特殊的侵权责任法律关系

医患法律关系性质的界定是正确理解法律、适用法律的基础。我国相关学说虽然多,但仅仅是站在某一个立场,或以某一现象为基础,难免会有失偏颇。理论界的研究尚欠深入,司法实践中也有不少问题。文章从法学的角度论证,医患法律关系的基本性质是民事法律关系,它不属于民事合同关系,而与侵权责任关系有相似,但由于医学科学和医疗行为的特殊性,它应是一种特殊的侵权责任法律关系。     

Corrective Justice as A Principle of Criminal Law: A Prolegomenon

This article argues that corrective justice is an adequate principle of criminalization. On my interpretation, corrective justice holds that, in order for an action to count as a crime, there needs to be a plausible normative story about an offender having violated the interests of a victim in a way that disturbs their relationship as equal persons and a subsequent story about responding to crime in a way that corrects this disturbance. More specifically, I claim that corrective justice is concerned with the protection of interests that persons have in owning private goods throughout standard interactions with other persons. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, I specify the subject-matter that principles of criminal law need to ground and provide an outline of the idea of corrective justice. Second, I show that corrective justice can account for the main cases of crime and the salient modes of criminal responsibility. I also argue that corrective justice can make sense of two prima facie recalcitrant types of cases (rape and inchoate offenses). Third, and finally, I address two objections to my corrective justice theory of criminal law. The first concerns the implications corrective justice has for locating criminal law along the private/public law divide. The second objection raises the putatively problematic consequences corrective justice has for understanding the separation between criminal and civil law.     

Toward a moral theory of negligence law

This paper explores how the widely acknowledged conception of tort law as corrective justice is to be applied to the law of negligence. Corrective justice is an ordering of transactions between two parties which restores them to an antecedent equality. It is thus incompatible with the comprehensive aggregation of utilitarianism, and it stands in easy harmony with Kantian moral notions. This conception of negligence law excludes both maximizing theories, such as Holmes' and Posner's, and Fried's risk pool, which combines Kantianism with distributive rather than corrective justice. Central to the Kantian approach is the impermissibility of self-preference. The two types of self-preference, self-preference in conception and self-preference in action can respectively account for the objective standard and the Learned Hand test, which are the two most characteristic features of negligence and which are generally (and wrongly) considered to be inescapably aggregative. This corrective justice conception of the negligence standard can then be compared to Epstein's corrective justice conception of strict liability, and arguments can be offered in favour of the superiority of the former.     

Legal Advice Privilege and its Relevance to Corporations

This article considers whether the rationale for legal advice privilege applies to corporations. It examines the rationale for legal advice privilege in the aftermath of the disagreement between the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords in the Three Rivers litigation, and argues that the rule of law rationale for advice privilege endorsed by the House of Lords is based largely on the needs and behavior of individuals. The paper examines the case for recognising advice privilege for corporations. Recent developments in corporate law and governance, especially in relation to directors' duties, have arguably reduced the need for a corporate privilege. Public and large private companies in particular already have sufficient incentives to obtain accurate legal advice about their affairs even without a privilege. There are also sound policy reasons for restricting the right of corporations to claim legal advice privilege given its costs to the administration of justice.     

作为侵权法正当性基础的结果责任——以英美侵权法理论的发展为背景

进入二十世纪以后,随着社会保障体系和第三者责任保险的出现,以及无过错责任的日益壮大,传统侵权法面临前所未有的"危机",这也成为英美侵权法理论无法回避的问题。作为侵权法基础的结果责任的正当性问题由此被提出,而对其加以证明则有两种途径:一是通过对经济分析理论和矫正正义理论进行比较研究,为侵权法中的结果责任寻找适当的理论基础;二是通过对社会化保障体系的具体分析,从社会实践的角度为结果责任的正当性提供证明。通过对新西兰社会实践失败的原因进行分析,侵权法保障自由与正义实现的功能在理论层面获得肯定。     

论民商法价值取向的异同及其对我国民商立法的影响

民法和商法作为调整市场经济关系的重要法律制度,既有密切联系又有一定区别。其区分依据除了要考虑法律的调整对象之外,立法价值取向的差异也是一个非常重要的因素。民法的最高价值取向是公平,立法上采取的是公平优先原则;而商法的最高价值取向则是效益,立法上采取的是效益优先原则。正确认识民法和商法在价值取向上的不同,无论对于理论研究还是司法实践都具有非常重要的意义。     

刑法解释的常识化

条文解释的常识化和学理研究的经验化,是我国刑法学发展过程中出现的一个显著特点。刑法学中的所谓“常识化”大致有两种不同的表述形式:一是刑法解释上的“公众认同”,二是所谓的“社会相当性”。刑法解释常识化是实现法律认识统一性的基础,是实现刑法公正与效率有机结合的重要条件,也是实现刑法目的的重要手段。但是,运用常识化方法解决法律适用问题,必须面对的问题是如何协调该方法中内在的矛盾关系,即常识与专业之间的关系、科学解释与效力解释之间的关系。在我国目前的刑法解释中,需要走出将生活常识等同于专业知识、以感性经验替代科学理论的误区。     

Doctrinal considerations for fast-food obesity suits

Lawsuits brought by obese plaintiffs against fast-food chains have been the subject of some derision in the late-night talk shows and popular press, and have not succeeded so far. But the common law tort theories on which such lawsuits should be grounded are straightforward, unremarkable, and mainstream. This article first offers an overview of obesity-related health problems that can arise from fast-food diets. It then critiques the seminal Pelman v. McDonald's--how it was pleaded and how it should have been pleaded--and offers alternative legal theories under which such lawsuits can be brought in the future.