Class 13

          Defendants have no responsibility to act reasonably unless they have a duty to act in the first place. The role of duty has been hotly contested. Some see duty analysis as duplicative—a simple repetition of questions that come up in other domains of negligence law. Others believe that duty gets at something fundamental about tort law and what it has to say about corrective justice, particularly the relationships that give rise to obligations.

          Later, we will focus on scenarios where there may be no duty to act. Now, we will consider how statutes can give rise to a duty where one would not otherwise exist. Statutes have proliferated. As Guido Calabresi wrote: “we have gone from a legal system dominated by the common law, divined by courts, to one in which statutes, enacted by legislatures, have become the primary source of law.” Guido Calabresi, A Common Law for the Age of Statutes 1 (1982).  The statutory revolution has had vast implications for tort law.  What do legislative rules governing conduct mean for questions about the reasonableness of that conduct? Does violating a safety statute count as negligence? When does a statutory safety standard imply a private cause of action in tort that would not have existed at common law?