“In Personalized Law: Different Rules for Different People, Professors Omri Ben-Shahar and Ariel Porat imagine a brave new tort world wherein the ubiquitous reasonable person standard is replaced by myriad personalized ‘reasonable you’ commands. More is said in the book about personalized standards of care than about personalized damages. When it comes to damages, Ben-Shahar and Porat seem torn. Corrective justice goals point in the direction of personalized damages, while deterrence goals favor the damage-uniformity approach. In the end, the authors’ assessment of personalized damages is tepid at best, perhaps even antagonistic: ‘A substantive legal rule that awards uniform damages for loss of life or limb, regardless of one’s income or earnings, has much merit. It would reject the notion that victims differ in a relevant manner, and would require no personalization‘ (emphasis added) …”
Catherine M Sharkey, Personalized Damages, University of Chicago Law Review Online 9 March 2022.
First posted 2022-03-10 12:00:36
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