FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES ON TORT LAW

Janice Richardson and Erika Rackley (eds), Routledge 2012, ISBN 978-0415619202 Price £80.00 hb Because it is the area of civil law with a distinctly human face, students often initially find tort law accessible; sometimes deceptively so. Early on, they are introduced to the importance of policy in the development of case law. Often this policy is not articulated, so a skill must be developed of reading between the lines, in order to discern the influence upon judicial decision-making of concerns such as those about the ‘floodgates’, or perhaps defensive practice. But additionally, both students, their teachers and users of the tort system, must be appraised that explicit assertions about ‘policy’ are premised upon much more fundamental and elusive assumptions about the way society does or should operate.