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From Individual to System Blame: A Cultural Analysis of Historical Change in the Law of Torts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Daniel Polisar  and
Aaron Wildavsky
Daniel Polisar
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Aaron Wildavsky
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

Legal scholars draw distinctions between government regulation and adjudication in the courts. Regulation is the more direct way to mandate safe behavior. A regulatory commission requires what it considers safe, and forbids everything else, leaving individuals, corporations, and governments the choice of complying or facing punishment. The rules regulators establish determine how thick a retaining wall must be, how many parts per billion of a substance will be tolerated, or how far a car window may roll down. Failure to meet a safety standard is a violation, whether or not an accident results. Regulators and courts can force compliance with standards and procedures even if no harm has occurred.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , April 1989 , pp. 129 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1989

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References

Notes

1. Friedman, Lawrence, Total Justice (New York, 1985), 59.Google Scholar

2. See Douglas, Mary and Wildavsky, Aaron, Risk and Culture (Berkeley, 1982)Google Scholar; Michael Thompson, “The Aesthetics of Risk: Culture or Context?” in Schwing, R. C. and Albers, W. A., eds., Societal Risk Assessment (New York, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “To Hell with the Turkeys: A Diatribe Directed at the Pernicious Trepidity of Current Intellectual Approaches to Risk,” in MacLean, D., ed., Values at Risk (New York, 1985)Google Scholar; Thompson, Michael and Wildavsky, Aaron, “A Proposal to Create a Cultural Theory of Risk,” in Kunreuther, H. C. and Ley, E. V., eds., The Risk Analysis Controversy: An Institutional Perspective (Berlin, 1982)Google Scholar; and Wildavsky, Aaron, “Choosing Preferences by Constructing Institutions: A Cultural Theory of Preference Formation,” American Political Science Review 81:1 (March 1987), 3–21.Google Scholar

3. White, G. Edward, Tort Law in America: An Intellectual History (New York, 1980), 13.Google Scholar

4. Ibid., 17.

5. For a list of sources holding this view, see Schwartz, G. T., “Tort Law and the Economy in Nineteenth-Century America: A Reinterpretation,” Yale Law Journal 90 (July 1981), 1717–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. See, for example, Rabin, Robert, “The Historical Development of the Fault Principle: A Reinterpretation,” Georgia Law Review 15 (1981).Google Scholar

7. Schwartz, “Tort Law and the Economy,” 1757.

8. Cited in White, Tort Law in America, 18.

9. Clark, John Kirkland, “Let the Maker Beware,” St. John's Law Review 19 (April 1945), 85–94.Google Scholar

10. See ibid.

11. Ibid.

12. Duval, Edwin, “Strict Liability: Responsibility of Manufacturers for Injuries from Defective Products,” California Law Review 33 (1945), 637.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. Clark, “Let the Maker Beware.”

14. Justice Roger Traynor's concurring opinion in Escola v. Coca Cola Bottling Company of Fresno, 24 C. 2d453, p. 462.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. M. Shapo, “Towards a Jurisprudence of Injury: The Continuing Creation of a System of Substantive Justice in American Tort Law,” published in 1984 as Report to the American Bar Association.

19. Ibid., 4–60 to 4–63.

20. See Second Restatement of Torts, Section 402A, published by the American Law Institute; and Prosser, Dean, “The Fall of the Citadel,” Minnesota Law Review 50 (1966), 791.Google Scholar

21. Cronin v. J. B. E. Olson Corp., cited in Schwartz, Gary T., “Foreword: Understanding Products Liability,” California Law Review 67:3 (May 1979), 435.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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24. Hoenig, “Resolution of ‘Crashworthiness’ Design Claims,” 636–37.

25. 630 F. 2d 950 (3rd cir. 1980).

26. Hoenig, “Resolution of ‘Crashworthiness’ Design Claims,” 648.

27. Ibid., 643.

28. Tien and Testa, “Critical Assessment of Social and Economic Implications of Safety Cars,” August 1974, cited in ibid., 640–41.

29. Ibid.

30. Shapo, “Towards a Jurisprudence of Injury,” 6–2 and 6–3.

31. Peirce, Neal R., “Towns Imperiled by Hefty Legal Judgments,” National Journal, 6 July, 1985.Google Scholar

32. American Motorcycle Association v. Supreme Court, 20 Cal. 3d 578, P.2d 899, 146 Cal. Rptr. 182(1978).

33. Laurence Friedman, Total Justice, 61.

34. Ibid., 62–63.

35. Ibid.

36. Mark A. Peterson, Compensation of Injuries: Civil Jury Verdicts in Cook County, R- 3011–1CJ; Audrey Chin and Mark A. Peterson, Deep Pockets, Empty Pockets: Who Wins in Cook County Jury Trials, R-3249- 1CJ.

37. “Deep Pockets, Empty Pockets: Patterns of Bias in Civil Jury Trials,” Rand Research Review 9:2 (Summer 1985), 2.Google Scholar

38. Friedman, Total Justice, 62–63.

39. See Wildavsky, Aaron, “Choosing Preferences by Constructing Institutions: A Cultural Theory of Preference Formation,” American Political Science Review 81:1 (March 1987), 3–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40. See Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture.

41. Friedman, Total Justice, 59, 61–62.

42. Ibid., 53–54.

43. See Wildavsky, Aaron, “Doing More and Using Less: Utilisation of Research as a Result of Regime,” in Dierkes, Meinolf, Weiler, Hans N., and Antal, Ariane Berthoin, eds., Comparative Policy Research: Learning from Experience (Aldershot, England: 1986), 56–93Google Scholar. A splendid comparison between British and American regulation of pollution is David Vogel's National Styles of Regulation: Environmental Policy in Great Britain and the United States (Ithaca, NY, 1986).Google Scholar

44. This list was conveniently supplied by a reviewer for this journal.

45. Hence, it is not so surprising that the law does not increase public safety but does harm private enterprise. For an argument about the negative safety effects of tort law as currently construed, see Wildavsky, Aaron, Searching for Safety (New Brunswick, NJ, 1988).Google Scholar