Private Law Theory

CONCLUSION
While the rise of liberalism has led to many advances in the justice and the rule of law that contribute to human flourishing, a fundamental flaw in the history of liberalism has been the failure to universally denounce the criminal law as an inherently illiberal institution. By abolishing the criminal law, and replacing it with an expanded law of torts, harms to persons and their property can be properly remedied under principles consistent with liberalism and within a decentralized liberal legal order, whether within a minimal state or a polycentric legal order. The above paper seeks to both advocate for this change and provide some initial thoughts on how such a transition could be achieved and what it would look like. While the criminal law has led to drastic violations of natural rights by the state, mass incarceration, and endless injustice for victims and offenders alike, a newly expanded law of torts can create a system of dispute resolution consistent with the liberal conception of justice and the rule of law, and promote an environment for human flourishing in the twenty-first century and beyond.

William SL Weinberg, Tort: The Liberal Alternative to the Criminal Law (2021) 15 New York University Journal of Law and Liberty 275.

First posted 2022-02-07 10:00:27