INTRODUCTION
Those who seek to understand tort law theoretically, says Weinrib, ‘do not start with a blank slate, but with the familiar normative practice known as tort law’. According to a leading group of modern tort theorists, this practice is best understood as cohering around a single norm of corrective justice. Tort law is said to embody this norm through its familiar enforcement of duties to have the harms that one’s wrong causes another to suffer repaired. Corrective justice theorists, in turn, use this norm to critically assess modern tort law’s positive substance. Tort doctrines that satisfy the requirements of corrective justice are approved, whilst that do not are disapproved.Footnote3 Among those strongly disapproved are two remedial doctrines that broadly punish tort litigants, rather than repair the harms that plaintiffs suffer: exemplary and contemptuous damages. The following two reasons are given for why – unlike that of reparative damages – these doctrines fail to satisfy the requirements of corrective justice …
Nicholas Sinanis, Corrective justice, punishment by damages and tort history, King’s Law Journal. Published online: 22 April 2025.
Leave a Reply