Private wrongs

Bibliographic Information

Private wrongs

Arthur Ripstein

Harvard University Press, 2016

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Summary: From the perspective of prominent positions in both moral philosophy and legal scholarship, tort law can seem baffling: people are made to pay damages when they are barely or not at fault, yet some serious harms go uncompensated. Many of these puzzles grow out of the assumption that the law's concern must either be to compensate losses or penalize misconduct. In private wrongs, Arthur Ripstein provides a philosophical and systematic account of the rights protected by tort law. The law of tort protects what people already have: their person, understood as bodily integrity and reputation, and property. Ripstein articulates the form of these rights, and provides a simple but compelling explanation of the sense in which the point of damages is to make it as if the wrong had never happened. He explains why this matters even though damages are at best an imperfect substitute and why enforcing private rights is consistent with the other activities of a liberal state without being reducible to them.--Publish

Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

A waiter spills hot coffee on a customer. A person walks on another person's land. A moored boat damages a dock during a storm. A frustrated neighbor bangs on the wall. A reputation is ruined by a mistaken news report. Although the details vary, the law recognizes all of these as torts, different ways in which one person wrongs another. Tort law can seem puzzling: sometimes people are made to pay damages when they are barely or not at fault, while at other times serious losses go uncompensated. In this pioneering book, Arthur Ripstein brings coherence and unity to the baffling diversity of tort law in an original theory that is philosophically grounded and analytically powerful. Ripstein shows that all torts violate the basic moral idea that each individual is in charge of his or her own person and property, and never in charge of another individual's person or property. Battery and trespass involve one person wrongly using another's body or things, while negligence injures others by imposing risks to them in ways that are inconsistent with their independence. Tort remedies aim to provide a substitute for the right that was violated. As Private Wrongs makes clear, tort law not only protects our bodies and property but constitutes our entitlement to use them as we see fit, consistent with the entitlement of others to do the same.

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

  • NCID
    BB2217757X
  • ISBN
    • 9780674659803
  • LCCN
    2015034402
  • Country Code
    us
  • Title Language Code
    eng
  • Text Language Code
    eng
  • Place of Publication
    Cambridge, Mass.
  • Pages/Volumes
    xiv, 313 p.
  • Size
    24 cm
  • Classification
  • Subject Headings
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