The Role of Money in Tort Law

Abstract

Tort law falls under civil law; it focuses on two parties and what has occurred between them. A tort is a wrongful loss or an infringement of a right that results in a harm or an injury to the victim from the wrongdoer. Tort law focuses on the defendant, who caused the wrongful act, and the plaintiff, who is the victim that has sustained damages due to the wrongful act occurring. The system that we have devised for amending the situation has money paying the main role. However, money is just a current form of exchange that can be accepted as reimbursement for goods or services. This quantifiable form of currency is being used as the solution to a wrongful act or an infringement of a right when there is no inherent conversion between the two. Therefore, the role of money in tort law begins to come into question. We will be analyzing the role of money in tort law under three different approaches that are used to analyze tort law in general, which are Retributivism, Law & Economics, and Corrective Justice. Under each of these three approaches we will be looking for two different elements. The first is the interpretation of money in the law, and the second is the moral justification of using money in this way.