Description

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Negligence is well established within the common law of torts, and its elements are equally well known: injury, duty, breach, and actual and proximate cause. It is uncontroversial that the plaintiff must establish each of these elements to make out a prima facie case of negligence. Accordingly there is no tort unless all of these elements are established. Since torts are understood to be  wrongs, it seems to follow that there is a wrong if and only if all of the elements of the tort of negligence are satisfied. It seems to follow, then, that the wrong of negligence is constituted by the completed tort of negligence. This is the conclusion that the speaker wishes to challenge here.  He will contend that the wrong of negligence does not require the kind of legally cognizable injury that the tort of negligence plainly requires. Causing a material harm to another is not a prerequisite for wronging them. Instead, one wrongs another when one breaches the duty of care that one owes to them.

About The Speaker

John F. K. Oberdiek is Distinguished Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School, Associate Graduate Faculty in the Rutgers-New Brunswick Philosophy Department and a Director of the Rutgers Institute for Law and Philosophy. He writes and teaches in torts and tort theory, as well as in legal, political, and moral philosophy more broadly, and has won awards for both his scholarship and teaching. He is a graduate of Middlebury College, and studied philosophy and law as a post-graduate at Oxford, NYU, and the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining the Rutgers faculty in 2004, he practiced law at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C. He is also Co-Editor of Law and Philosophy, Co-Editor of the biennial series of articles Oxford Studies in Private Law Theory as well as the Oxford Private Law Theory book series, a member of the Editorial Board of Legal Theory, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and both a member of the American Law Institute and an Adviser to the ALI’s Restatement (Fourth) of Property.

*Photo Credit: Rutgers Law School