Tort and the Demands of Interpersonal Justice: A Reply to Professor Papayannis

This is a post by Gregory C. Keating (USC Gould School of Law).

In his excellent blog post Does Tort Law Really Care About You?, Diego Papayannis addresses a fundamental question of tort law and challenges my view of the matter as he understands it from my book Reasonableness and Risk (OUP 2022). The role of the law of torts is to secure us against harm at each other’s hands as we go about our lives in civil society. How then should the law of torts respond to unavoidable harm?

Does Tort Law Really Care About You?

This is a post by Diego M. Papayannis (University of Girona).

Imagine you live just 50 meters away from a massive cement plant. The plant operates lawfully and takes every reasonable precaution, yet its dust emissions still cause severe damage to your property and health. Because the economic activity carried out by the plant is of utmost importance to your town, the court refuses to issue an injunction to put an end to the nuisance. Instead, it awards you permanent damages to compensate for all the harm suffered. Problem solved?

Stereotypes, Access to Justice and the Masking of Individuality

This is a post by Federico Arena (University of Girona).

When someone utter stereotypes like “Girls are not good at mathematics” or “Mapuches are usually drunk” we intuitively sense something wrong with what has been said. The reasons for the negative evaluation of stereotypes are linked to the varieties of harms that they may cause to the stereotyped people. Indeed, such statements often express inaccurate beliefs that are the result of the imposition to certain groups of discriminatory social relationships and inegalitarian hierarchies.