Tort law and criminal law are closely bound together but their relationship rarely receives sustained and rigorous scrutiny. This is the first significant project in England and Wales to address that shortcoming. Building on growing interest amongst both academics and practitioners in the relationship between tort and crime, it draws together leading experts to chart the field and explore key points of interest. It uses a range of perspectives from legal theory, doctrine, legal history and comparative law to address some of the most important and interesting links between tort and crime. Examples include how the illegality defence operates to avoid stultification of the law, the difference between criminal and civil causation, how the Motor Insurers' Bureau not only insures but acts to enforce laws and alter behaviour, and why civil law only very rarely restores specific property but the criminal law does it daily.

Matthew Dyson is a Fellow in Law at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, where he specialises in the relationship between tort and crime. He teaches tort law, criminal law, Roman law, comparative law and European legal history. He has held visiting positions at the Universities of Girona, Valencia, Sydney and Goëttingen and been a visitor at Harvard University as well as a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg.