Cornell Law Review

Article

Torts as Private Administration

Nathaniel Donahue, JD/Ph.D. candidate, Yale University, nathaniel.donahue@yale.edu

John Fabian Witt, Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law, Professor of History, and Head of Davenport College, Yale University, john.witt@yale.edu

What does tort law do? This Article develops an account of the law of torts for the age of settlement. A century ago, leading torts jurists proposed that tort doctrine’s main function was to allocate authority between judge and jury. In the era of the disappearing trial, we propose that tort law’s hidden function is…

May 2020