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This chapter concerns itself with the identification of the subject-matter of the book, wrongs and the law of wrongs. Regarding the former, the definition offered of a wrong (or civil wrong) is that it is the violation of a right, and therefore a breach of duty. The relationship between the concepts of ‘duty’, ‘right’, and ‘wrong’ is explored; as are the notion of an ‘interest’, and the alternative analytical framework followed in particular by Nils Jansen. Concerning the delineation of the law of wrongs, this chapter explains why, in order to maintain a stable field of enquiry across jurisdictional divides, the book will exclude breach of contract and public law from its scope.

The civilian tradition, as exemplified by Justinian's Institutes and the French Civil Code, has generally divided its law of civil wrongs into two categories, wrongs ‘proper’ and ‘quasi-wrongs’. Nowhere, however, does it state unambiguously the rationale, or even the content, of this dichotomy. The common law, on the other hand, has only ever had, in spite of some procedural divisions, one class of civil wrongs. From this observation, two questions arise, which will form the subject-matter of the book: How and why did the civilian tradition split up its law of wrongs, and what did it make of this division? What, if anything, could the common law learn from the civilian experience on this point?

This chapter addresses the significance of civil procedure in private law’s treatment of civil wrongs. It begins by canvassing contemporary private law theory, focusing in particular on the civil recourse theory of tort law. The chapter notes that civil recourse theory incorporates assumptions about private law’s characteristic responses to wrongs, each of which is, ultimately, an assumption about the law of civil procedure. They include assumptions that civil litigation is strongly adversarial, that it provides plaintiffs with an opportunity to confront defendants for civil wrongs, and that it culminates in an authoritative judicial declaration of where things stand between the parties as a matter of right. This chapter also points out that civil recourse theorists tend to treat these features of procedural law as fixed and essential elements of tort law. But close examination shows this to be a mistake. The rise of routinized settlement and arbitration, among other things, suggests that private law’s procedural responses to civil wrongs are varied and changing, often in ways inconsistent with interpretations given by leading theorists.

This chapter is concerned with the common law, but it has a Roman beginning. By starting from the Roman analysis in which it had its origin, one can most easily set out the common law classification in which civil wrongs, or torts, form one important category. The concept of a civil wrong cannot be investigated other than in the context of that classification. The second-century jurist Gaius was the first to advance the proposition that every obligation arises from a contract, a wrong, or from some other causal event. However, he saw that that would not do, for there were indisputable instances of legal obligation handed down from the unsystematic past which arose from neither. The obligation to return a mistaken payment was a prominent example. The threefold classification – contracts, wrongs, and other events – was not the end of the Roman story. The miscellaneous third category posed a challenge.

This chapter discusses the senses in which private law is responsive to wrongs. It begins by explaining that while private law is responsive to civil wrongs, it is responsive to other kinds of wrongs, too, including moral wrongs. The chapter explains that private law proves particularly responsive to moral wrongs within the conscience-based jurisdiction of equity. It also notes that private law’s responses to wrongs are varied. Furthermore, in certain circumstances, courts’ concern for moral wrongs in the enforcement of legal rights will mean that it overlooks a civil wrong or deviates from its customary responses (remedial or otherwise) to these wrongs. Finally, the variety evident in private law’s responses to wrongs suggests that wrongs raise different concerns of justice within private law, some of which may be in tension.

This chapter claims that the commission of a civil wrong generally holds no significance for the substantive rights and duties of the parties to the wrong, and that it holds but minor significance in the law of remedies. This chapter’s claims are based on an analysis of the relationship between the nature of particular civil wrongs and the content of associated remedies. It is true that wrongs are causally significant to remedies, in that proof of a wrong is frequently a condition requisite to the award of a remedy. But this does not imply that remedies are responsive to wrongs in the more robust and important sense of being addressed to the wrong as such. This chapter explains that many remedies do little more than insist on respect for an underlying right, in which case the wrong is just an occasion for an order for performance of a substantive duty. Remedies are robustly responsive to wrongs only where the wrong itself supplies reasons for “creative” court-ordered remedies, these reasons being reflected in the content of the remedies ordered.

This chapter examines the nature of civil wrongs from the perspective of the law of remedies, querying the supposition that remedies are exclusively responsive to primary rights violations and, in turn, the related supposition that a civil wrong is nothing more the violation of a primary right and correlative duty. Here, remedies correct for wrongs, but it is essential to recognize that the nature of a wrong—and, in turn, the selection of an apt or responsive remedy—is not driven exclusively by the nature of the right that was violated by the wrongdoer. This chapter’s analysis is framed as a critique of corrective justice theorists’ assertion of tight conceptual and normative connections between primary rights and duties on the one hand and remedies on the other. It argues that remedies are partly responsive to rights violations, and thus the ex ante positioning of the parties as a matter of right. But an expectation of responsiveness underdetermines choices between different kinds of remedies and those bearing on the quantum of relief to be afforded to a successful plaintiff.

This chapter argues that non-instrumental, deontic approaches to tort law—like Corrective Justice or Civil Recourse Theory—presuppose an unspecified and undefended non-naturalist account of the normativity of civil wrongs. Linking this puzzle to current debate within metaphysics, the chapter argues that a deontic theory of tort must be a theory of legal grounding—that is, an account of the relationship between torts and the facts that underwrite them. It specifies a model of the logical form of this grounding relationship and then examines whether it is a metaphysical or, instead, a sui generis legal relationship. The chapter then turns squarely to Corrective Justice and Civil Recourse Theory to determine whether they can make good on their metaphysical presuppositions.

This chapter defends a bilateral or “personal” conception of relationality in tort law. It argues that a personalized conception of duty and civil wrongs is compatible with the forward-looking reorientation of tort theory, is interpretively defensible, and is normatively superior to a depersonalized form of relationality. This chapter begins by resisting the conceptual argument that the wrong of negligence is not an affront to anyone in particular. It goes on to explore the value of personhood and argues that only a personalized conception of duty respects the autonomy of persons as agents. Finally, this chapter defends the value of the pattern of relations that only a personalized conception of duty makes possible.

The mapping metaphor was first used by William Blackstone in 1756, when he said that the duty of the ‘academical expounder of the laws’ was to make clear how the various parts of the law fitted together. This chapter is concerned with three maps which together show where unjust enrichment belongs and how it is itself divided. The first of the three maps fixes its relation to other categories of the same kind. The second relates those event-based categories, and unjust enrichment in particular, to the law of obligations and the law of property. These are not categories of causative event but of responses to events. The third map raises the level of magnification so as to expose the layout of unjust enrichment itself. This chapter gives a more complete picture of the classification of rights by reference to their causative event and looks at four categories of civil wrongs: torts, equitable wrongs, breaches of statutory duty not amounting to a tort, and breaches of contract.

This chapter cautions against the moral grounding of private rights and duties and, in turn, private law's response to wrongs. The argument is framed as a rebuke to those who suppose that private law must be interpreted from an internal, rather than instrumental, point of view. According to this chapter, interpretive theorists assume that the deontic structure of private law implies deontological moral grounding. But it argues that there is no good reason to think this, and, indeed, there are plenty of reasons to think otherwise. Private law may be formally deontic but nevertheless have instrumental moral justification. The interesting and difficult question is what to make, normatively, of the deontic structure of private law. Against the view that civil wrongs are moral wrongs, this chapter asserts that they are purely formal.

This chapter aims to clarify the moral foundations of private law’s response to wrongs, as well as the underlying deontic structure of relationships of right, duty, wrong, and remedy in ethics and in law. It begins by introducing the idea of ethical individualism. Ethical individualism implies that: duties are individuated, individuation of duties entails that the right-holder will ordinarily enjoy certain powers in relation to the normative significance of wrongs that they suffer, and the morally salient facts about right-holders that justify their rights are such as to require special consideration of the right-holder in the discharge of individuated duties. This chapter presents some important refinements on ethical individualism and registers some caveats to accounts of civil wrongs which expressly or impliedly endorse it. One refinement explains variability in the law’s recognition of normative powers in right-holders. Another refinement this chapter discusses is in relation to the analysis of rights and powers at issue in third-party beneficiary arrangements.

This chapter examines whether and how malign motives can convert the otherwise innocent exercise of a property right into a civil wrong. As a doctrinal matter, courts have been willing to grant that motives do indeed matter in certain cases. Tracking a distinction drawn within the theory of rights proper between specificationism and generalism, this chapter imagines two ways of making sense of this phenomenon: one might liken property rights to a lattice wherein they are defined permanently at the outset to exclude badly motivated conduct, or one might instead analogize them to a blanket in which holes can be cut around badly motivated acts piecemeal. The chapter opts for the second conceptualization because it meshes better with property’s in rem aspect—they “cover” all cases, one might say—and the organic way property rights evolve. Motives rarely alter property rights, but by factoring in the owner’s incivility as well as victims’ interests and broader social interests, exceptional cases come into focus that illuminate the structure of property rights.

This chapter argues that civil wrongs are central to remedies. It shows that private law remedies are primarily responsive to wrongs. Furthermore, the stringency of secondary or remedial duties reflects the special moral significance of wrongs as such. This chapter attributes the tendency to discount the normative relationship between wrongs and remedies to lack of clarity on that between primary and secondary moral and legal duties. Here, the justification for secondary legal duties becomes an extension of that for secondary moral duties. This implies that the way forward lies in the clarification of the normative significance of the deontic structure of private law and, in turn, the associated moral aims of private law.

The chapter presents the underlying idea behind this volume and serves as an introduction to domestic violence and the law in India. Tracing the history of laws addressing domestic violence both as a crime and a civil wrong, the author explains how the collection of essays in this volume evaluate some of the essential concepts that shaped the framing of the PWDVA and its treatment in the hands of judges. Providing insights into the challenges faced in drafting and enforcement of the PWDVA, such as inclusion of women in ‘relationships in the nature of marriage’ and unique provisions such as the ‘right to residence’, the author discusses the extent to which PWDVA has succeeded in fulfilling its purpose and areas of enforcement that remain a challenge even after a decade.

Section 1 starts by considering the central notion of this book: a “ecocritique”. The ecocritique recognises that the good life for all includes the well-being of the world we are involved in at every level from the cellular to the cosmic. It is all encompassing. Section 1 then considers how the term “anecdote” relates to ecocritique. Anecdotes provide a peculiarly powerful tool for finding out the meaning of living well, as well as the answering the oft-asked question: who is this “we”? The beauty of anecdotes is that they operate in a non-contemporaneous time. They operate equally well in the past, present, and future. A primary political and ecocritical task of anecdotal method, therefore, is to recognise this hybrid temporality, and to free and maintain its capacity to generate new futures and new pasts.