We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
The most important point to emerge from this chapter, which considers social services available to the disabled (amongst others), is that cash compensation and benefits are not the only way of helping the disabled to cope with their disabilities, and live decent and fulfilling lives.
This chapter delineates the duty of care concept in English law. The overarching claim made is that the main function of the concept is to define the boundaries of liability for damage caused by negligent conduct by reference to what are commonly called ‘policy considerations'.
The fault principle has traditionally been understood as a principle of morality, which can justify not only the imposition of liability for death and personal injury but also the notion that the award of compensation should fully repair losses suffered. But, in moral terms, the fault principle is vulnerable to several objections. It can also be attacked on social and practical grounds. This chapter considers various arguments that might be made against the fault principle as a basis for the payment of compensation to victims of personal injuries by those who inflict them.
A person cannot incur tort liability to pay damages for injury or damage suffered by another unless that injury or damage was caused by the former’s tortious conduct. Causation of harm is essential to tort liability because tort law is a set of principles of personal responsibility for conduct. Tort law compensates the injured, but only if someone else was responsible for those injuries; and normally a person will not be responsible for injuries unless their conduct caused the harm. In other words, the tort system is a ‘cause-based’ compensation system. This chapter reveals the complexity latent in these apparently straightforward propositions and analyses the principles of law that are relevant in this regard.
This chapter explores the major features of the social security system in so far as it provides support to victims of impairment and death. The society security system's relationship with the tort system is assessed, and it is compared with the tort system more generally. It is contended that one laudable preference within the social security system is that benefits for long-term disablement are relatively more generous than those for short-term disablement. Conversely, it is also argued that the industrial injuries scheme, unlike the tort system, embodies an indefensible preference in favour of the industrially disabled.
This chapter addresses the various functions that compensation systems are generally thought to serve. Central ideas explored include corrective justice, distributive justice and deterrence.
This chapter addresses several fundamental commitments of the tort system in relation to the assessment of compensation. These commitments include the idea that compensation is payable as a lump sum and the notion that compensation should be full in the sense that it rectifies the whole of the loss suffered.
This chapter addresses basic questions that arise in relation to the intersection of insurance and tort law. The centrality of insurance to the tort system and the role of insurance plays is explored. Attention is also given to the major different types of insurance that can be purchased. Finally, the chapter explains how liability insurance has had a profound impact on tort law.