Torts Against the State

2020 ◽  
pp. 323-350
Author(s):  
Paul B. Miller ◽  
Jeffrey A. Pojanowski
Keyword(s):  
Tort Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Private Wrongs

This chapter argues that the dominant “interpersonal accountability model of tort law” must be significantly amended to accommodate tort law’s protection of the interests of artificial persons. The chapter focuses on protection of state interests, in particular. It begins with a critical exposition of the interpersonal accountability model, highlighting the extent to which leading tort theorists share the assumption that torts are wrongs that are suffered by natural persons alone. Next, the chapter shows that and how the interpersonal accountability model neglects torts against the state, and offers a schema for categorizing these torts. The chapter concludes by tracing the implications of arguments developed in it. Among other things, it notes that understanding that tort law includes torts against the state calls into question the tendency to gloss torts as “private wrongs” and supports the practice of treating them as “civil wrongs.”

Reconstructing Malice in the Law of Punitive Damages

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc O. DeGirolami
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Punitive Damages ◽  
State Law ◽  
Object A ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
Private Wrongs

Abstract Punitive damages present two related puzzles. One concerns their object. If they are punitive, their object is to punish tortfeasors. If they are damages, their object is to compensate tort victims. If they are both, the problem is to reconcile these different objects in applying them. A second puzzle involves their subject. Punitive damages are awarded for egregious wrongdoing. But the nature of that egregiousness is nebulous and contested, implicating many poorly understood terms. The two puzzles are connected, because the subject of punitive damages will inform their object. Once we know the type of wrongfulness that punitive damages deal with, we can understand better whether and how they are punishing, compensating, or both. This Article reconstructs one of punitive damages’ central subjects: malice. In so doing, it clarifies one key object of punitive damages: to offer redress to a victim of cruelty. Malice is a ubiquitous textual element in the state law of punitive damages. But there has been little scholarly commentary about what malice means for punitive damages. Drawing from the common history of tort and criminal law, this Article identifies two core meanings of malice: a desire or motive to do wrong, and a disposition of callous indifference to the wrong inflicted. Though distinct, these meanings broadly coalesce in the concept of cruelty. The Article argues that this reconstructed account of the wrong of malice represents a powerful justification for awarding punitive damages. Malice as cruelty as a justification for punitive damages also fits within a broader view of tort law as redress for specific private wrongs. But malice as a subject of punitive damages clarifies and enriches this account of their object. A victim of a tort done with malice, and who is aware of it, has been wronged more gravely than a victim of a tort done without malice and is, therefore, entitled to greater redress.

Torts

2019 ◽  
pp. 443-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence M. Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
English Language ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
Growth Spurt ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Law ◽  
Private Wrongs

This chapter discusses the development of tort law in the second half of the nineteenth century. Tort law experienced its biggest growth spurt in the late nineteenth century. The legal world began to sit up and pay attention. The very first English-language treatise on torts appeared in 1859: Francis Hilliard’s book, The Law of Torts, Or Private Wrongs. Then came Charles G. Addison, Wrongs and Their Remedies in 1860, in England. By 1900, there was an immense literature on the law of torts; Joel Bishop and Thomas M. Cooley had written imposing treatises on the subject; the case law had swollen to heroic proportions. Tort law was a product of the industrial revolution; England here had a head start; problems emerged there first, and so did their tentative legal solutions.

Getting Even: The Role of the Victim

1990 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrie G. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
Crime Victims ◽  
The State ◽  
Financial Compensation ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
American System ◽  
Compensation Package ◽  
Judgment Proof

Achilles is vindictive; he wants to get even with Agamemnon. Being so disposed, he sounds rather like many current crime victims who angrily complain that the American system of criminal justice will not allow them the satisfactions they rightfully seek. These victims often feel that their particular injuries are ignored while the system addresses itself to some abstract injury to the state or to the rule of law itself – a focus that appears to result in wrongdoers being treated with much greater solicitation and respect than their victims receive. If the actual victims are noticed at all (other than to alert the state to a violation of its interests), they will likely be told that there is another branch of law – tort law – that has the job of dealing with private injuries and grievances and that, if they pursue this route at their own expense, they might ultimately get some financial compensation for the wrongs done to them. However, just as Achilles felt that mere compensation was inadequate to the kind of injury done to him by Agamemnon, many of these victims will often claim that the injuries they have suffered (brutal rape, perhaps) do not admit of financial compensation. How, they might ask, can a dollar value be set on the humiliation and degradation they have experienced? They might also note that those who injure them tend, unlike Agamemnon, to be judgment-proof – so lacking in resources as to be unable to make any meaningful contribution to any compensation package that the victim may win.

scholarly journals WHO IS MY NEIGHBOUR? THE DUTY OF CARE IN THE IMMIGRATION CONTEXT: A PERSPECTIVE FROM CANADIAN CASE LAW

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 117
Author(s):  
Sasha Baglay
Keyword(s):  
Tort Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Duty Of Care ◽  
Power Imbalance ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Absolute Power ◽  
Host State ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Nuanced Understanding

This article reviews and analyzes recent Canadian jurisprudence on immigration-related torts, situating it in the context of the contrasting logic of immigration and tort law. Immigration law’s focus on the absolute power of the state to control admission directs courts away from the recognition of the duty of care. In contrast, tort law theory does not preclude the possibility of private law duties to non-citizens, especially in light of the absence of other effective remedies to address the power imbalance between the host state and the non-citizen. The article examines how these two narratives were negotiated in cases of alleged negligence in immigration processing. It problematizes certain aspects of the current construction of the duty of care towards non-citizens and offers some suggestions for a more nuanced understanding of the factors considered under the Anns/Cooper test. Dans cet article, l’auteure examine et analyse la jurisprudence canadienne récente des délits civils relatifs à l’immigration en la situant dans le contexte de la logique d’opposition du droit de l’immigration et du droit de la responsabilité civile délictuelle. Le droit de l’immigration, qui est centré sur le pouvoir absolu de l’État de contrôler l’admission d’immigrants, fait oublier aux tribunaux la reconnaissance du devoir de diligence. En revanche, la théorie du droit de la responsabilité civile délictuelle n’écarte pas la possibilité d’obligations de droit privé envers des non-nationaux, surtout en l’absence d’autres recours applicables pour résoudre le déséquilibre de pouvoir entre l’État d’accueil et le non-national. Dans cet article, l’auteure étudie la manière dont ces deux discours ont été conciliés dans des cas de négligence présumée dans le traitement de demandes d’immigration. L’auteure définit le problème que posent certains aspects de l’interprétation actuelle du devoir de diligence envers des non-nationaux et présente quelques idées permettant une compréhension nuancée des facteurs pris en compte dans la cause type Anns/Cooper.

Issues in the Law of Torts

1990 ◽  
Vol 24 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 651-656
Author(s):  
Israel Gilead
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Internal Structure ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Statutory Duty ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Relationship

In a recent article, Prof. Izhak Englard reviewed the salient developments in tort law over the last decade. These developments are:(a) Deciding the question of the internal structure of the Civil Wrongs Ordinance as regards the relationship between the general and the specific torts.(b) Extension of tortious liability for negligence, and the crystallization of the conceptual framework of that tort.(c) Expanding the scope of the tort of breach of a statutory duty by allowing the unimpeded inclusion of statutory duties within the scope of the Civil Wrongs Ordinance.(d) Removal of the umbrella erected by the case law in order to shield the State and its agencies from liability for negligence and the breach of a statutory duty, and the equation of the position of the State to that of other tortfeasors.

scholarly journals Examination and the State of Intoxication: Features of Legal Regulation and Observance of Human Rights and Freedoms

2020 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 40-47
Author(s):  
М. А. Самбор
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
The State ◽  
Small Vessels ◽  
Convincing Argument ◽  
Inadmissible Evidence ◽  
Security Measure ◽  
The Right

The author of the article examines the state of alcohol, drugs or other intoxication, as well as the influence of drugs that reduce the attention and speed of reaction, as a measure to ensure the proceedings in cases of administrative offenses, and features of legal regulation of its use during documentation of administrative offenses, as well as the admissibility of using the obtained data as evidence in proceedings on administrative offenses. The examination of the state of intoxication is not just a measure to ensure the proceedings in cases of administrative offenses, but a necessary procedural action, which allows to assert the presence in the actions of a person of an administrative offense. It is alleged that an examination of the state of intoxication, in particular of drivers, is possible only if they are detained administratively. It is applied to the documentation of other administrative offenses, the proof of which requires the establishment of a state of intoxication. In other circumstances, such an examination of intoxication should be considered inadmissible evidence in an administrative offense case, since it was obtained in substantial violation of human rights and freedoms, including the right to liberty and security, as well as a number of other rights, which the detained person failed to exercise. It is appropriate that such a security measure as the removal of a driver from driving the vehicle had a procedural form, in this regard, we consider it necessary to supplement the Art. 266 of the Code of Administrative Offenses with Part 8 of the following wording: «On the removal of persons from driving vehicles, river and small vessels authorized officials execute the minutes». We are confident that the offered amendments to the legislation will contribute to the development of administrative tort law, its institutions, which positively affect both the legal system and legislation of independent Ukraine, raising the prestige of its legal system in the world, and serve as a convincing argument for citizens to become victims of arbitrariness of authorities.

Practical Picture Processing

1974 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 338-339
Author(s):  
T. A. Welton
Keyword(s):  
Radiation Damage ◽  
Coherence Length ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Coherent Radiation ◽  
The State ◽  
Energy Spread ◽  
Electron Micrograph ◽  
Picture Processing ◽  
Molecular Skeleton

Various authors have emphasized the spatial information resident in an electron micrograph taken with adequately coherent radiation. In view of the completion of at least one such instrument, this opportunity is taken to summarize the state of the art of processing such micrographs. We use the usual symbols for the aberration coefficients, and supplement these with £ and 6 for the transverse coherence length and the fractional energy spread respectively. He also assume a weak, biologically interesting sample, with principal interest lying in the molecular skeleton remaining after obvious hydrogen loss and other radiation damage has occurred.

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