The Role of Negligence in Modern Tort Law

Abstract

S o central is the idea of fault to our past and present concept of tort liability, that to inquire about its continued role invites speculation about the very future of civil liability and the function that may remain for it in taking care of the injured in the years to come. In large measure, that future will be determined by the extent to which the task of compensation will increasingly be entrusted to other legal institutions, especially to social security and other forms of insurance. Long-range questions about loss bearing that we have been accustomed to debate solely in terms of tort liability will increasingly demand consideration in the wider context of the whole panoply of social institutions charged with alleviating the lot of the community's unfortunates and allocating the cost in a socially and economically acceptable manner. The part played by tort law in that task is bound to shrink to ever more modest proportions, to the point where today's postulates, based on very different assumptions about its work load, will be doomed to irrelevance. That time however has not yet come. In the short run, therefore, it is perhaps not entirely idle to venture a summation about the place of negligence within the modest perspective of today's and tomorrow's orientation.