A unifying principle underlying the economic torts - interference with contract, conspiracy, intimidation and unlawful interference with trade or business - has yet to be authoritatively recognised by the courts. For this reason, the development of the underlying legal and policy bases of liability and non-liability with respect to these torts has been hindered to a considerable extent. The current boundaries of their operation are consequently also unduly restricted, and they co-exist somewhat uncomfortably with analogous and overlapping principles of liability in other areas of the law, principally equity. This article offers some suggestions as to the rationalisation and resolution of some of these issues and attempts to map what, in the writer's view, is the best way forward. In particular, it is submitted that a general principle of liability for intentionally inflected non-physical harm, subject to a sufficiently wide and pliable defence of justification, should be recognised by the common law.