ABSTRACT
Like corrective justice theorists, Gregory Keating contends that tort law is centrally concerned with the vindication of individual rights. Like economic theorists, he rejects the idea that individual injurers are the inevitable site of tort duties. While some tort doctrines instantiate relational rights and duties, others instantiate collective duties to potential victims. There is thus a deep continuity between tort law and administrative law according to Keating. Is such a conception of tort law compatible with a principled commitment to deontological morality or will it inevitably devolve into a utilitarianism of rights where tort rights and duties are merely instrumentally justified as mechanisms for the protection of individual rights against harm? I will argue that at least some of the institutional heterogeneity that Keating highlights and defends can be a principled entailment of deontological theorizing, if we move away from an understanding of torts as wrongs to a view of tort law as a site of deliberation about what justice between the parties requires in the face of normative uncertainty about justice.
Stone, Rebecca, Who are the Bearers of Tort Law’s Duties? (June 26, 2024), UCLA School of Law, Public Law Research Paper; Law and Philosophy, Forthcoming.
Leave a Reply