Campbell, David (2015) Interpersonal justice and actual choice as ways of determining personal injury law and policy. Legal Studies, 35 (3). pp. 430-442. ISSN 0261-3875
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Abstract
Adapting the concept of ‘interpersonal justice’ used by Professor Robertson to provide a ‘meta-doctrinal’ defence of the law of negligence, this article asks whether the personal injury system can be thought to have a democratic justification in common beliefs in such justice. It is widely acknowledged that the gross functional inadequacy of the personal injury system makes it implausible to claim that that system can be justified on grounds of compensation or deterrence. But that inadequacy makes it equally implausible to claim that common citizens would chose that system, which exists only because it is effectively compulsory. Constructing a market in first person insurance would put the existence of the personal injury system to the test of actual choice.