Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Reflections of a Torts Teacher on the Bench

Reflections of a Torts Teacher on the Bench AbstractI have been a judge for twenty-four years and have taught Torts for sixty years. What has all that taught me about Torts, about federal-state relations in this field, and about judges and judging? The first thing I learned is how important Torts and Torts reasoning are in many areas that we don’t think of as being traditionally Torts. The second thing I have come to realize is how significant federal preemption has become to the field. The third thing I have come to understand is why judges and judicial lawmaking are particularly important in Torts: the people who are active in pushing and resisting Torts “reforms” before legislatures are bound to be repeat players; courts, instead, are invoked by non-repeat parties. My fourth realization upon becoming a judge is a completely different one: there are situations in traditional Torts-negligence law that seem sufficiently rare to require little attention but are, in fact, central to areas of law that a federal judge sees all the time. My fifth point has to do with how little federal judges in general, and federal appellate judges in particular, know or understand about Tort law. My last reflections go to something of a totally other sort. And that is the difference I have come to see in the roles of scholars and of judges. It is often said of judges that they should “do justice though the heavens fall.” That is, of course, nonsense. A judge who truly risked causing the heavens to fall would be thrown off the bench in no time. The role of scholars is quite different. As scholars, our role is to tell and write the truth as we have come to see it, fully and courageously, though the heavens fall. Our job is to look in dark places, shine light on what we believe is really going on, and reveal what is actually occurring in the face of the human subterfuges and legal fictions that obscure the truth. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Tort Law de Gruyter

Reflections of a Torts Teacher on the Bench

Journal of Tort Law , Volume 11 (2): 12 – Oct 25, 2018

Loading next page...
 
/lp/de-gruyter/reflections-of-a-torts-teacher-on-the-bench-F0NfajcOE9

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
ISSN
1932-9148
eISSN
1932-9148
DOI
10.1515/jtl-2018-0010
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

AbstractI have been a judge for twenty-four years and have taught Torts for sixty years. What has all that taught me about Torts, about federal-state relations in this field, and about judges and judging? The first thing I learned is how important Torts and Torts reasoning are in many areas that we don’t think of as being traditionally Torts. The second thing I have come to realize is how significant federal preemption has become to the field. The third thing I have come to understand is why judges and judicial lawmaking are particularly important in Torts: the people who are active in pushing and resisting Torts “reforms” before legislatures are bound to be repeat players; courts, instead, are invoked by non-repeat parties. My fourth realization upon becoming a judge is a completely different one: there are situations in traditional Torts-negligence law that seem sufficiently rare to require little attention but are, in fact, central to areas of law that a federal judge sees all the time. My fifth point has to do with how little federal judges in general, and federal appellate judges in particular, know or understand about Tort law. My last reflections go to something of a totally other sort. And that is the difference I have come to see in the roles of scholars and of judges. It is often said of judges that they should “do justice though the heavens fall.” That is, of course, nonsense. A judge who truly risked causing the heavens to fall would be thrown off the bench in no time. The role of scholars is quite different. As scholars, our role is to tell and write the truth as we have come to see it, fully and courageously, though the heavens fall. Our job is to look in dark places, shine light on what we believe is really going on, and reveal what is actually occurring in the face of the human subterfuges and legal fictions that obscure the truth.

Journal

Journal of Tort Lawde Gruyter

Published: Oct 25, 2018

There are no references for this article.