Common Law Codification: Lessons and Warnings from Twenty-First Century Australia
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Mark Lunney
Abstract
Codification of tort law is a rare phenomenon in the common law world. However, building on earlier precedents, in the early 2000s, Australian jurisdictions embarked on a project of placing important general principles of negligence law into legislation. This article considers these provisions and argues that they can be considered as an attempt to codify certain parts of the law of tort. Both the process by which this codification took place, and the contents of the ‘codes’, provide interesting comparative material for civilian jurisdictions with codified tort law as well as for common law systems.
Endnote
This article is adapted from the author's keynote address at the 18th Annual Conference on European Tort Law, Vienna, Austria on 25-27 April 2019. My thanks are due to helpful comments and discussions with attendees.
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Common Law Codification: Lessons and Warnings from Twenty-First Century Australia
- Simplifying the Complexities of Negligence Law – A Joint Academic/Judicial Proposal
- No-fault Law on Medical Accidents in Belgium: An Evaluation after Six Years
- What’s in a Name? The Case for Protecting the Reputation of Businesses under Article 1 Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights
- Book Review
- Piotr Machnikowski (ed), European Product Liability: An Analysis of the State of the Art in the Era of New Technologies (Intersentia, Cambridge 2016). ix+705pp. ISBN 978-1-78068-398–0. $141.51 (paperback).
- Vanessa Wilcox, A Company’s Right to Damages for Non-pecuniary Loss (Cambridge University Press 2016). xxxiv + 192 pp. ISBN 9781107139275. £21.99 (hardback).
- J Le Bourg/C Quézel-Ambrunaz (eds), Sens et non-sens de la responsabilité civile (Université Savoie Mont Blanc 2018). 444 pp. ISBN 978-2-919732-88–3. € 30 (paperback).
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Common Law Codification: Lessons and Warnings from Twenty-First Century Australia
- Simplifying the Complexities of Negligence Law – A Joint Academic/Judicial Proposal
- No-fault Law on Medical Accidents in Belgium: An Evaluation after Six Years
- What’s in a Name? The Case for Protecting the Reputation of Businesses under Article 1 Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights
- Book Review
- Piotr Machnikowski (ed), European Product Liability: An Analysis of the State of the Art in the Era of New Technologies (Intersentia, Cambridge 2016). ix+705pp. ISBN 978-1-78068-398–0. $141.51 (paperback).
- Vanessa Wilcox, A Company’s Right to Damages for Non-pecuniary Loss (Cambridge University Press 2016). xxxiv + 192 pp. ISBN 9781107139275. £21.99 (hardback).
- J Le Bourg/C Quézel-Ambrunaz (eds), Sens et non-sens de la responsabilité civile (Université Savoie Mont Blanc 2018). 444 pp. ISBN 978-2-919732-88–3. € 30 (paperback).
