Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This book argues that tort law has to be understood and ultimately vindicated as the actualization of two theories: the conflict and the equality theory of tort law. It is not wrongdoing, harm, or social cost that gives us reason to have tort law in the first place. Instead, it is human conflict—specifically, conflict between our fundamental interests—that occupies the moral center of tort law. How we respond to such conflicts determines which wrongs, harms, or costs should, if at all, be addressed by tort law. The conflict theory elaborates on the nature and normative significance of three types of conflict: inherently valuable, tolerably valuable, and valueless. While preventing or remedying valueless conflict is one important implication of the theory, it is not the only one. The theory emphasizes the importance of containing tolerably valuable conflict and, most consequentially, of constructing the conditions necessary for inherently valuable conflict to arise. Moreover, the human conflict to which tort law responds reflects a commitment to treating the parties to a conflict as equals. The equality theory defended in this book is grounded in the egalitarian ideal of relating as equals. On this view, tort law must determine terms of interaction that take seriously differences in the interests and conditions of the interacting parties. By doing so, tort law secures the ability of the parties in a conflict to relate as substantive, rather than merely formal, equals.</jats:p>