This book will be of broad interest to those working in legal and moral philosophy. It examines central puzzles in understanding the law of torts, including the role of responsibility and strict liability, the place of corrective justice in tort's moral foundations, and the role of law and economics in tort theory.

John Oberdiek is Professor at the Rutgers University School of Law. His is also a Director of the Rutgers Institute for Law and Philosophy, Associate Graduate Faculty in the Rutgers Department of Philosophy, Co-Editor of the journal Law and Philosophy, and has been a Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellow at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton.

• Introduction: Philosophical Foundations of the Law of Torts


• Part I: Foundations of Tort Law


• 1: John C.P. Goldberg and Benjamin C. Zipursky: Tort Law and Responsibility


• 2: Stephen Perry: Torts, Rights, and Risk


• 3: Mark A. Geistfeld: Compensation as a Tort Norm


• 4: Scott Hershovitz: Tort as a Substitute for Revenge


• 5: John Oberdiek: Structure and Justification in Contractualist Tort Theory


• 6: Eric R. Claeys: On the "Property" and the "Tort" in Trespass


• 7: Peter Cane: Tort Law and Public Functions


• Part II: Harms, Wrongs, Responsibility, and Liability


• 8: Victor Tadros: What Might have Been


• 9: Rahul Kumar: Why Reparations?


• 10: R.A. Duff: Repairing Harms and Answering for Wrongs


• 11: Linda Radzik: Tort Processes and Relational Repair


• 12: David Enoch: Tort Liability and Taking Responsibility


• 13: Kenneth W. Simons: Exploring the Relationship Between Consent, Assumption of Risk, and Victim Negligence


• 14: Gregory C. Keating: Strict Liability Wrongs


• 15: Anthony J. Sebok: Normative Theories of Punitive Damages: The Case of Deterrence


• Part III: Distributive Justice in Tort Law


• 16: John Gardner: What is Tort Law For? Part 2. The Place of Distributive Justice


• 17: Hanoch Sheinman: Tort Law and Distributive Justice


• Part IV: Skeptical Perspectives


• 18: Heidi M. Hurd: Finding No Fault With Negligence


• 19: Larry Alexander and Kimberly Kessler Ferzan: Confused Culpability, Contrived Causation, and the Collapse of Tort Theory


• Bibliography