Abraham on Particularity and Generality in Torts and Regulation

Ken Abraham has posted to SSRN Particularity and Generality in Torts and Regulation. The abstract provides:

This Essay, written in honor of Professor Michael D. Green, explores an aspect of the relation between tort law and regulation: the varying levels of particularity and generality that the two sources of law employ and reflect. The Essay reveals both similarities and differences between these two regimes that have not garnered as much attention as many of their other features. The Essay emphasizes several features of this phenomenon. First, although the greater particularity of much tort law usually enables it to serve corrective justice and civil recourse more effectively than regulation, most tort law and most regulation also serve what the Essay calls “preventive” justice, through the deterrence of harmful conduct. Second, despite its greater particularity, there still is much in tort law that operates at a level of generality analogous to regulation. And third, the Essay considers how the different possible interactions between tort and regulation can serve the purposes of these two sources of law in different ways.