Keating on The (Mis)Alignment Debate

Over at JOTWELL, Greg Keating has posted a review of Mistakes, Misunderstandings, and Misalignments, 121 Yale L.J. Online 541 (2012), by Jules Coleman.   From Keating’s review:

Professor Coleman has now responded that Porat’s account of misalignment is unpersuasive because negligence law is not misaligned. It is aligned but in terms of its own intrinsic logic not in terms of efficiency. The sequence of elements in a negligence claim determines whether a putative wrongdoer in fact conducted themselves with sufficient regard for the interests of the party claiming wrongful harm at their hands. The elements are coherent on their own terms and that is all the coherence they need.

This is a rich, sophisticated debate which will repay close study by anyone interested in the nature of tort liability and the future of tort theory.

– SBS