Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Buffalo Law Review

Abstract

This Article focuses on developments in New York's tort law between 1920 and 1980. I have chosen to focus on the law of a single state because such a focus makes possible a distinct kind of study, in which one can examine not only leading cases known to all casebooks but also the often highly revealing secondary opinions of the state's highest court and the opinions of intermediate and trial court judges. This focus also makes statistical analysis of the work of trial courts possible and in other ways facilitates the placement of doctrinal change in a broader pattern of political, intellectual and cultural development. Hopefully, the study of a single state will produce a deeper kind of knowledge than would a rehash of the leading cases we already know. The reason for choosing New York as the state for study is that, during most of the period under analysis, it was the most populous state and the cultural and economic leader of the nation. In its metropolitan center, in its upstate industrial cities, in its suburbs and in its rural farmlands and environmentally protected woodlands, New York contained locales similar to those in all the rest of the nation except the Deep South and the Pacific Southwest. New York was more representative of the nation as a whole than any other state, and hence the findings of this Article should serve as revised hypotheses about twentieth century development of American tort law in general until other scholars, through equally detailed studies of California, Texas, Georgia and elsewhere, prove them wrong. The main claim of this Article is that in the first half of this century courts focused on issues of fairness in the adjudication of tort cases, but that during the second half of the century judges have made considerations of efficiency their primary concern. A further claim is that this shift from fairness to efficiency was the result, albeit indirectly, of policies adopted by the United States military establishment during the course of World War II. These claims, if accepted, have significant implications for the existing scholarly literature on the subject of tort law.

First Page

117

Volume

47

Publication Date

1999

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