Stern on From Clapham to Salina: Locating the Reasonable Man @ArsScripta @LawLitJournal

Simon Stern, University of Toronto Law, has published From Clapham to Salina: Locating the Reasonable Man at 36 Law & Literature 391 (2024). Here is the abstract.

“The man on the Clapham omnibus” is an often cited but poorly understood name for the standard of reasonable care in tort. It originated in a 1903 decision in which this formula was used not to articulate a legal standard but to describe an average person whose views have no legal significance. This figure finds a cousin in another personification, as “the man who takes the magazines at home, and in the evening pushes the lawn-mower in his shirt sleeves.” Both formulations have complex histories that help to underscore their inaptness as descriptors for the standard they are used to represent. These two examples also help to show, more generally, why a personified standard (“the reasonable person”) tends to introduce problems that do not arise with a more abstract one (“reasonableness,” “reasonable care”). Many critics have shown that the “reasonableness” standard is susceptible to problems of bias and framing. Personifying the standard invites the inappropriate use of individuated figures with particular features (e.g., a bus rider from a London suburb) that only worsen these problems. This article traces the history of these two standards, tries to explain how they moved from descriptive to normative use, and then turns to problems with personified standards more generally, showing how some superficially appealing reasons for using a personified standard prove to be unpersuasive.

The full text is available by subscription.

Hasday on Intimate Lies and the Law (Introduction), Oxford University Press (2019) @JillHasday @UofMNLawSchool @OUPLaw @OUPAcademic

Jill Elaine Hasday, University of Minnesota Law School, has published Introduction: Intimate Lies and the Law (Oxford University Press, 2019). Here is the abstract.

Intimacy and deception are often entangled. People deceive to lure someone into a relationship or to keep her there, to drain an intimate’s bank account or to use her to acquire government benefits, to control an intimate or to resist domination, or to capture myriad other advantages. No subject is immune from deception in dating, sex, marriage, and family life. Intimates can lie or otherwise intentionally mislead each other about anything and everything. Suppose you discover that an intimate has deceived you and inflicted severe—even life-altering—financial, physical, or emotional harm. After the initial shock and sadness, you might wonder whether the law will help you secure redress. But the legal system refuses to help most people deceived within an intimate relationship. Courts and legislatures have shielded this persistent and pervasive source of injury, routinely denying deceived intimates access to the remedies that are available for deceit in other contexts. Jill Elaine Hasday’s Intimate Lies and the Law is the first book that systematically examines deception in intimate relationships and uncovers the hidden body of law governing this duplicity. Hasday argues that the law has placed too much emphasis on protecting intimate deceivers and too little importance on helping the people they deceive. The law can and should do more to recognize, prevent, and redress the injuries that intimate deception can inflict. Entering an intimate relationship should not mean losing the law’s protection from deceit.

Download the Introduction from SSRN at the link.

Goold on the Lost Tort of Moral Rights Invasion @harvard_law

Patrick Russell Goold, Harvard Law School, is publishing The Lost Tort of Moral Rights Invasion in the Akron Law review. Here is the abstract.

Moral rights are often portrayed as an unwelcome import into U.S. law. During the nineteenth century, European lawmakers, influenced by personality theories of authorship, began granting authors rights of attribution and integrity. However, while these rights proliferated in Europe and international copyright treaties, they were not adopted in the United States. According to a common historical narrative, U.S. courts and lawmakers resisted moral rights because they were deemed incompatible with the copyright tradition of treating expressive works as alienable property. What little moral rights U.S. law provides today is thus seen as a necessary evil, grudgingly accepted, simply to comply with international obligations. This Article presents a history of moral rights protection that challenges, to a degree, that common historical narrative. The Article tracks how American courts adjudicated attribution and integrity disputes during the twentieth century. Doing so not only reveals that the American judiciary was more sympathetic to these claims than commonly appreciated, but, even more surprisingly, came close to developing a tort of moral rights invasion. While copyright historians know that courts have long provided proxy protection for moral rights under preexisting common law causes of action (e.g., defamation, unfair competition, privacy, etc.), what is not widely known is how frequently courts were willing to protect attribution and integrity interests directly under the banner of moral rights. This Article tells the story of how courts in the mid-twentieth century, applying state law, increasingly articulated a "sui generis tort" of moral rights invasion. It then proceeds to question why the moral rights tort stagnated and was forgotten about in the late twentieth century.

Download the article from SSRN at the link. Cross-posted to Media Law Prof Blog.

Ari Ezra Waldman on Copyright Law and Revenge Porn

Ari Ezra Waldman, New York law School, has published Images of Harassment: Copyright Law and Revenge Porn at 23 Federal Bar Council Quarterly 15 (Sept./Oct./Nov. 2015). Here is the abstract.

Nonconsensual pornography, commonly known as “revenge porn,” usually occurs when an individual (usually a man) publicly posts online sexually explicit images of his former partner (usually a woman). Although normally the stuff of tort law, revenge porn offers copyright attorneys opportunities to help victims, as well: the offending images are often selfies taken by the victim and thus covered by the victim’s copyright. There is, to date, no Second Circuit case law on the subject, making this area uniquely suited to creative social impact litigation. Until state legislatures or Congress pass well-drafted criminal revenge porn statutes, copyright law remains a necessary though inadequate weapon to combat revenge porn in the Second Circuit and elsewhere.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Jack Weinstein and the Development of Tort Theory

James R. Hackney, Jr., Norheastern University School of Law, has published Judge Jack Weinstein and the Construction of Tort Law in America: An Intellectual History at 64 DePaul Law Review 495 (2014). Here is the abstract.

This Article explores the intersection between the judicial and scholarly work of Judge Jack Weinstein, particularly as related to mass tort litigation and the development of legal theory and tort law in America. The primary focus will be on Judge Weinstein’s handling of the Agent Orange litigation. Judge Weinstein’s tenure on the federal bench began in 1967. Some seven years earlier, Ronald Coase published his The Problem of Social Costs, a monumental moment in American legal theory and tort law policy. Three years later, Guido Calabresi published his path-breaking text, The Costs of Accidents. These two texts are representative of the law and neoclassical economics movement, which would indelibly shape tort law theory in America during Judge Weinstein’s years as a judge. Law and neoclassical economics is most often discussed as a methodology for analyzing tort law on the basis of efficiency. However, it also exemplifies a broader approach to law that goes beyond efficiency analysis and can be found in much of contemporary legal theory. This broader approach focuses its analysis on the social good as opposed to prioritizing individual rights. It is through the lens of these two features of twentieth-century legal theory (efficiency and the social good), particularly as they apply to tort law, that this Article will examine the Agent Orange litigation. The Agent Orange litigation is a landmark in American history. It involved hundreds of lawsuits, thousands of claimants (15,000 by one estimate), and seven corporate defendants. Aside from its scope, the issues surrounding Agent Orange are particularly worthy of attention because they exemplify the problems associated with resolving mass tort cases. An intriguing aspect of Judge Weinstein’s worldview, which is reflected in the disposition of the Agent Orange litigation, is that he champions efficiency and the social good while placing a premium on recognizing individual suffering as an existential reality. Of course, the Agent Orange litigation is also circumscribed by the specter of the Vietnam War, which makes it an even more compelling site of inquiry. The Agent Orange litigation and Judge Weinstein’s legendary handling of it provides us with a unique opportunity to consider tort law in the context of not only legal theory, but one of America’s most searing historical moments, the Vietnam War. Note: Reproduced with permission of DePaul Law Review.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.