Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Virginia Law Review

Abstract

Rarely does a book — let alone one on torts — come along with true staying power. Tort Law and the Construction of Change is such a book. It stopped me in my tracks when I first read it, and it has been a book to which I have returned again and again while teaching torts and probing new research projects. With Tort Law and the Construction of Change, Professors Kenneth Abraham and G. Edward White, who have inspired generations of torts students and scholars, have truly energized and inspired this nearly twenty-year veteran in the field. Abraham and White explore the past, present, and future of tort law through a historical, theoretical, and pragmatic lens seeking to excavate and explicate how doctrines evolve. Their central thesis is that “[c]ontinuity arises in part out of linking current decisions, even if they are innovative and constitute an expansion of liability, to the principles expressed or implied in prior precedents,” and that “external pressure for change in established common law doctrines is almost always filtered through received doctrinal frameworks.” I pay tribute to their book in this Essay, with equal parts praise (Part I), quibbling (Part II), and prodding for roads not taken (Part III).

First Page

465

Volume

109

Publication Date

2023

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