Loss without Remedy: Moby-Dick and the Laws of Compensation

Abstract Reading Moby-Dick alongside the groundbreaking tort and accident jurisprudence of Melville's father-in-law, Massachusetts Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw, reveals that the white whale's attack on Captain Ahab involves the same questions of risk, responsibility, and redress posed by nineteenth-century industrial accidents. More specifically, Ahab embodies the recrudescence of an earlier, revenge-based conception of justice that emerges in reaction to the pro-business jurisprudence of Shaw, in which industry was increasingly shielded from liability to its victims in cases of “pure accident”—precisely the possibility Ahab is fatally unable to accept. As narrator, Ishmael in turn augurs the rise of a new legal order that disavows the focus on blame and responsibility altogether.