Tilley on Tort Law & Virtue
Cristina Tilley (University of Iowa - College of Law) has posted Private Law, Public Law, and the Production of American Virtue (Northwestern Univ. Law Rev., Online Vol. 115, (December 2020)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This Essay, contributed to a festschrift celebrating the scholarship of Marshall Shapo, suggests that the time has come to revitalize private law – tort law, in particular – as an engine of national virtue. The groundswell of activism in the summer of 2020 lends itself to particularizing this argument to the virtue of racial justice, but it is equally applicable to gender justice, economic justice, and innumerable other areas where social fracture burdens human flourishing. The piece summarizes the intellectual history that has led legal academics to treat public law as the only legal intervention applicable to social ills like racism. It then pivots to survey how disciplines outside law understand the component parts of racism