TORT LAW
This research guide provides on overview of Tort Law resources and other related sources.
A tort is a civil wrong beyond a breach of contract for which the law provides relief. The law of torts focuses on private rights of redress, where aggrieved parties bring actions in tort to recover damages for the harm caused by defendants...Tortious wrongs can take various forms, such as personal injury or death, harm to property, or interference with other protectable interests such as the right to be free from unwarranted invasions of privacy.
- John L. Diamond, Lawrence C. Levine & Anita Bernstein, Understanding Torts (6th ed. 2018).
First, unlike torts and contracts, the criminal law involves public law. That is, although the direct and immediate victim of a crime typically is a private party (e.g., the person who is robbed, assaulted, or kidnapped), and other individuals are indirectly harmed (e.g., the family members of the direct victim), a crime involves more than a private injury. A crime causes "social harm," in that the injury suffered involves "a breach and violation of the public rights and duties, due to the whole community, considered as a community, in its social aggregate capacity." For this reason, crimes in the United States are prosecuted by public attorneys representing the community as a whole, and not by privately retained counsel. There is more, however, that should distinguish a criminal wrong from its civil counterpart. A person convicted of a crime is punished..."[T]he essence of punishment...lies in the criminal conviction itself," rather than in the specific hardship imposed as a result of the conviction. The hardship suffered as a result of the criminal conviction may be no greater or even less than that which results from a civil judgment...What, then, essentially distinguishes the criminal law from its civil counterpart, or at least should distinguish it, is the societal condemnation and stigma that accompanies the conviction.
- Joshua Dressler, Understanding Criminal Law (8th ed. 2018).
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