‘Patching Things Up’

Linda Radzik, Tort Processes and Relational Repair in Philosophical Foundations of the Law of Torts (John Oberdiek ed, 2014). Imagine you are trying to write a mission statement for tort law. What aspiration would you put on paper? Tort theorists will find Linda Radzik’s answer at once familiar and foreign. In Tort Processes and Relational Repair, Radzik suggests that tort should pursue corrective justice. But she rejects the familiar Aristotelian conception of corrective justice, on which wrongdoing calls for compensation that offsets the harm caused. Instead, she suggests that corrective justice requires reconciliation. According to Radzik, tort should aim to repair the relationships ruptured by wrongdoing, rather than the harms that result from it … (more)

[Scott Hershovitz, JOTWELL, 13 May]

First posted 2014-05-13 12:40:35

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