The tangled, intertwined concepts of the law of negligence are a constant source of fascination for lawyers, and also a source of despair. The one produces an almost endless stream of comment on the intricacies of ‘duty’, ‘remoteness’, ‘causation’ and ‘foreseeability’, while the other forces many to conclude their remarks with an exasperated, ‘but it's all policy anyway’. Yet ‘policy’ is the beginning not the end of wisdom in the law. The crucial question is exactly what these policies consist of. The legal method, as opposed to the economic or the sociological, approaches the task by tearing up and reconstructing legal ‘concepts’.