David McCarthy has recently suggested that our compensation and liability practices may be interpreted as reflecting a fundamental norm to hold people liable for imposing risk of harm on others. Independently, closely related ideas have been criticized by Stephen R. Perry and Arthur Ripstein as incompatible with central features of negligence law. We aim to show that these objections are unsuccessful against McCarthy's risk–liability theory and that such an approach is a promising means both for understanding the moral basis of liability for negligence and for reasoning about possible reforms of the institution of negligence law.