TORT LAW
1. The Law Commission wishes to reform English and Welsh tort law to make it more coherent. It has therefore decided to produce a series of proposals aimed at reforming discrete parts of the law of tort. You have been asked to propose a reform of your own. Write
a memo proposing and defending one reform to any area of tort doctrine that you have studied on module LU2022. Your memo must include the following:
– A summary of the doctrine (both common law and statutory, as appropriate) in your chosen area as it currently stands, including an analysis of the deficiencies in that doctrine that you think require reform;
– A detailed proposal for one specific reform you think should be made, including a statement of the aims your reform is designed to achieve (how widely or narrowly your proposed reform is designed is up to you);
– A defense of your proposal explaining why it is necessary and how it will contribute to greater coherence in tort doctrine in this jurisdiction.
Your memo may also include any other matter related to your proposal that you feel is relevant.
2. ‘In the end, all tort cases can and should be governed by the basic principle that the ends justify the means.’ Discuss.
3. ‘Different torts aim to do fundamentally different things. Some torts are informed by a commitment to corrective justice. In other torts, the pursuit of distributive justice dominates judicial thinking. This results in tort law, as a body of doctrine, being incorrigibly incoherent.’
Discuss.
4. ‘[T]he courts will not invent a new cause of action to cover types of activity which were not previously covered[.]’ Campbell v Mirror Group Newspapers Ltd [2004] UKHL 22, [2004] 2
AC 457, [133] (Baroness Hale) To what extent does this statement reflect a desirable attitude to the development by judges of tort doctrine?
