This book offers nine key ideas about tort law that will help the reader to understand its various social functions and evaluate its effectiveness in performing those functions. The book focuses, in particular, on how tort law can guide people’s behaviour, and the political and social environments within which it operates. It also provides the reader with a wealth of detail about the ideas and values that underlie tort ‘doctrine’—tort law’s rules and principles, and the way those rules and principles operate in practice. The book is an accessible introduction to tort law that will provide students, scholars and practitioners alike with a fresh and engaging view of the subject.


‘In this masterful and engaging survey, Peter Cane provides an array of illuminating perspectives on the law of torts, laying bare its nature, structure and functions, as well as its legal, social and political context.’

Andrew Robertson, Professor of Law, Melbourne Law School

This is an insightful and well-written book. -- Liron Shmilovits * University of Cambridge *
This is a very clearly written introduction to the crucial ideas in the Law of Tort. It is both thought-provoking and enjoyable to read. Reading it will be of great assistance to students in any year of undergraduate study who are about to start grappling with what is otherwise a large, and potentially daunting, volume of statute and common law in this field. -- John Kelly * University of Lincoln *
An intelligent analysis of key concepts in the law of tort. -- Eleanor Russell * Glasgow Caledonian University *
A book that gets students to broaden their thinking about tort law to evaluate how effective it is as achieving is objectives. -- Mark Edwards * Sheffield Hallam University *

Peter Cane is a Senior Research Fellow at Christ’s College, Cambridge. He was previously Distinguished Professor of Law at the Australian National University College of Law, and before that a Professor of Law at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.