Situating Tort Law Within a Web of Institutions: Insights for the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Reasonableness and Risk offers two main claims that might open up fruitful avenues for further reflection. The first claim has to do with the need to abandon form and turn our attention to substance. The argument is that we cannot understand or justify the law of torts without attending to the interests that it protects. The second claim is related to the need to abandon the habit of treating torts in isolation and instead study its integration within a web of institutions which share responsibility for protecting the urgent interests of members of society. The argument here is that our urgent interest in physical integrity exceeds (goes beyond and is greater than) the law of torts. In engaging with these claims, this paper points out potential connections with some pressing questions for both tort law and risk regulation brought to the fore by the recent emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems.