Tort Law

At its most fundamental level, tort law addresses a basic human need: how to handle situations where one person causes harm to another outside of any contractual relationship. The word “tort” comes from the Latin “tortus,” meaning twisted or wrong.

A tort occurs when three essential elements converge: duty, breach, and harm. Every person has certain duties to avoid causing foreseeable harm to others. When someone breaches that duty and causes harm, tort law provides a framework for making the injured party whole through compensation.

Building on these fundamentals, tort law developed into three main categories:

  • Intentional Torts: These occur when someone deliberately causes harm to another. The key principle here is volition - the tortfeasor (person committing the tort) meant to perform the action that caused harm. Examples include battery, assault, and false imprisonment. The intent doesn’t have to be malicious; they simply need to have intended the action itself.

  • Negligence: This represents the largest category of torts and builds on the concept of reasonable care. The fundamental principle is that we all owe a duty of reasonable care to avoid causing foreseeable harm to others. When someone fails to meet this standard and causes harm, they become liable. This applies to everything from car accidents to medical malpractice.

  • Strict Liability: This category exists for situations where society has determined that certain activities are so inherently dangerous that we hold people liable regardless of their level of care or intent. The core principle here is that those who create extraordinary risks should bear the costs of any resulting harm. This applies to things like keeping dangerous animals or manufacturing defective products.

The Economic Foundation

From an economic perspective, tort law serves to internalize externalities. When someone’s actions impose costs on others, tort law ensures they bear those costs, creating incentives for efficient levels of care and risk-taking. This promotes both justice and economic efficiency.

Modern Application

Today’s tort law builds on these principles while adapting to new challenges. For instance, cyber torts have emerged to address harms in the digital space. Product liability has evolved to handle complex global supply chains. Yet the fundamental principles remain: duty, breach, causation, and harm.

Looking at how these principles interact in practice helps understand the system’s coherence. For example, in a car accident case:

  • The driver has a duty to operate their vehicle safely
  • Speeding or texting while driving breaches that duty
  • If this breach causes an accident that damages someone’s property or person
  • The driver becomes liable for those damages

This framework provides both compensation for victims and incentives for careful behavior, serving both corrective and distributive justice while promoting social welfare.

Understanding tort law through first principles reveals its elegant solution to a fundamental social problem: how to fairly allocate the costs of accidents and intentional harms in a complex society. It provides rules for responsibility and compensation while creating incentives for optimal care and risk-taking.