The Other Side of Tort Liability: When the System Doesn’t Seem to Work

A special issue of Laws (ISSN 2075-471X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2025 | Viewed by 191

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Faculty of Law & Justice, The University of New South Wales, Kensington, NSW 2052, Australia
Interests: tort law; especially the impact of apology on tort liability; succession law, esp. comparative succession law and Indigenous issues in succession law

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We spend most of our lives discussing the doctrine of the law of torts, but in this Special Issue of Laws I want the articles to discuss how the law of tortious liability actually impacts on the people who go through the compensation systems, whether standard litigation, class actions, or workers’ compensation systems. We know, for example, that the length of time litigation takes appears to affect the mental health of plaintiffs badly. We know that people are awarded damages, but that often those damages appear not to be enough. We also know that the increase of settlements which are confidential may be affecting the law. Other issues which may impact on people’s experience of the tort liability system include whether apologies appear to benefit people or reduce their desire to litigate and what the ramifications of this are. Class actions are regarded as an important way of getting access to the law but do they actually assist in access to compensation or simply reduce the likelihood of adequate compensation being received? A few years ago I edited, with Arno Akkermans, a book entitled Unexpected Consequences of Compensation Law (Hart Publishing, 2020) in which we began to look at some of these issues. In this issue I would like to investigate the impact of the doctrines and procedures of liability in tort law further. I am assuming you have an interest in torts which goes beyond the doctrinal and extends to some aspect of how torts impacts in the real world. I very much hope you will be interested in contributing an article on some aspect of this topic. I’m very happy to discuss it with you to help shape it if you would like.

Prof. Prue Vines
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • tort law
  • tort liability
  • compensation law

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Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission.
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