The Tort Entitlement to Physical Security as the Distributive Basis for Environmental, Health, and Safety Regulations
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Mark A. Geistfeld
Abstract
In a wide variety of contexts, individuals face a risk of being physically harmed by the conduct of others in the community. The extent to which the government protects individuals from such harmful behavior largely depends on the combined effect of administrative regulation, criminal law, and tort law. Unless these different departments are coordinated, the government cannot ensure that individuals are adequately secure from the cumulative threat of physical harm. What is adequate for this purpose depends on the underlying entitlement to physical security. What one has lost for purposes of legal analysis depends on what one what was entitled to in the first instance. Consequently, any mode of safety regulation that requires an assessment of losses or costs ultimately depends on a prior specification of entitlements. For reasons of history and federalism, the entitlement in the United States can be derived from the common law of torts. In addition to establishing how costs should be measured, the tort entitlement also quantifies any distributive inequities that would be created by a safety standard and shows how they can be redressed within the safety regulation. When applied in this manner, the tort entitlement to physical security promotes substantive consistency across the different departments of law by serving as the distributive basis for environmental, health, and safety regulations that operate entirely outside of the tort system
© 2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- Introduction
- The Uneasy Case of Multiple Injurers’ Liability
- Assumption of Risk, After All
- Lapses of Attention in Medical Malpractice and Road Accidents
- Tort-Agency Partnerships in an Age of Preemption
- The Tort Entitlement to Physical Security as the Distributive Basis for Environmental, Health, and Safety Regulations
- Reg Neg Redux: The Career of a Procedural Reform
- Internality Regulation Through Public Choice
- Modeling Partial Agency Autonomy in Public-Health Policymaking
- Reexamining the Pathways to Reduction in Tobacco-Related Disease
- Competitive Third-Party Regulation: How Private Certification Can Overcome Constraints That Frustrate Government Regulation
- Outcome-Based Regulatory Strategies for Promoting Greater Patient Safety
- Whither Whistleblowing? Bounty Regimes, Regulatory Context, and the Challenge of Optimal Design
- A Sampling-Based System of Civil Liability
- Operation Arbitration: Privatizing Medical Malpractice Claims
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- Introduction
- The Uneasy Case of Multiple Injurers’ Liability
- Assumption of Risk, After All
- Lapses of Attention in Medical Malpractice and Road Accidents
- Tort-Agency Partnerships in an Age of Preemption
- The Tort Entitlement to Physical Security as the Distributive Basis for Environmental, Health, and Safety Regulations
- Reg Neg Redux: The Career of a Procedural Reform
- Internality Regulation Through Public Choice
- Modeling Partial Agency Autonomy in Public-Health Policymaking
- Reexamining the Pathways to Reduction in Tobacco-Related Disease
- Competitive Third-Party Regulation: How Private Certification Can Overcome Constraints That Frustrate Government Regulation
- Outcome-Based Regulatory Strategies for Promoting Greater Patient Safety
- Whither Whistleblowing? Bounty Regimes, Regulatory Context, and the Challenge of Optimal Design
- A Sampling-Based System of Civil Liability
- Operation Arbitration: Privatizing Medical Malpractice Claims
