Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2016
The law on intentional torts is a broad area of tort law, governing physical assaults, takings of property, and related direct invasions of rights. The question of how much care an individual should take to avoid an accidental injury to someone else, treated abstractly in the second chapter, will have less relevance in this chapter. Intentional torts result from conduct that clearly will impose a loss on someone. Tort law regulates intentional conduct by determining how those losses ultimately will be allocated.
THE INTERNALIZATION PRINCIPLE
When a man goes upon his neighbor's land, thinking it his own, he intends the very act or consequence complained of. He means to intermeddle with a certain thing in a certain way, and it is just that intended intermeddling for which he is sued.…One who diminishes the value of property by intentional damage knows it belongs to somebody. If he thinks it belongs to himself, he expects whatever harm he may do to come out of his own pocket. It would be odd if he were to get rid of the burden by discovering that it belonged to his neighbor.
The foregoing passage from Holmes pretty well sums up the function of liability for intentional torts. Put simply, liability serves an internalization function, by shifting the losses an actor imposes on others through intentional conduct back to the actor. For example, if A throws a rock through B's window, the internalization principle requires A to pay for the loss he imposed on B.
Why internalize losses caused by intentional conduct? Because, as Holmes suggested, if you take an action that directly imposes a loss, such as breaking a window, that loss will have to be borne by someone. Internalizing the loss compels the actor to take the loss into account in deciding which action to take. Thus, internalization induces the actor who handles someone else's property to follow the same decision process he would follow when handling his own property, to treat the losses he imposes on others as if they were his own.
What is desirable about making actors treat the losses they impose on others as their own? Return to the window-breaking example. Why would a person choose to break his own window? There are many reasons.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.