Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
As human societies developed, a bedrock necessity was the identification of expectations and norms that protected individuals and families from wrongful injury, property damage, and takings. Written law, dating to the Babylonian codes and... more
As human societies developed, a bedrock necessity was the identification of expectations and norms that protected individuals and families from wrongful injury, property damage, and takings. Written law, dating to the Babylonian codes and early Hebrew law emphasized congruent themes. Such law protected groups and individuals from physical or financial insult, depredation of the just deserts of labor, interference with the means of individual livelihood, and distortion of the fair distribution of wealth. Hellenic philosophers assessed the goals of society as being the protection of persons and property from wrongful harm, protection of the individual’s means of survival, discouragement of self-aggrandizement, and the elevation of individual knowledge that would carry forward and perfect such principles. Roman law was replete with proscriptions of forced takings and unjust enrichment, and went so far as to include rules for ex ante contract-based resolution of potential disagreement. ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The reach of federal statutory preemption of inconsistent state law obligations has extended to numerous products liability subject matters, including most notably tobacco products, agricultural pesticides, medical devices and automobile... more
The reach of federal statutory preemption of inconsistent state law obligations has extended to numerous products liability subject matters, including most notably tobacco products, agricultural pesticides, medical devices and automobile air bags. The Supreme Court decision in Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc. countenanced a broad application of federal preemption when the subject statute contained an express preemption clause. Eight years later the Court appeared to back away from Cipollone, and held in Geier v. American Honda Motor Co. that even as to statutes with express preemption clauses, the simultaneous presence of a savings clause might trigger a narrow reading of the preemption provision. The potential effect of Geier upon lower court decisions in liability suits involving pesticides, medical devices, or even tobacco products, will necessarily be played out in litigation before lower courts for years to come. The significance of federal statutory preemption of inconsistent ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The Institutes of Justinian and other Graeco-Roman recitations of tort-type delicts and remedies are recognized as root stock of modern western tort law, common law, or civil code-based alike. Long before these sources, however, both... more
The Institutes of Justinian and other Graeco-Roman recitations of tort-type delicts and remedies are recognized as root stock of modern western tort law, common law, or civil code-based alike. Long before these sources, however, both ancient and primitive cultures adopted norms and customs which defined permissible individual and group conduct, and which provided for remedies ranging from money damages to banishment. Among the surveyed examples of ancient cultural responses to tort-type delicts were numerous instances in which both the civil wrong identified and the remedy provided for can be harmonized readily with modem tort law, whether it is practiced in common law or civil code nations or throughout the world. A broad range of such examples can be found not only in the nations or regions in which such norms obtained, but also in their specific subject areas: pubic nuisance, manslaughter, assault, trespass, conversion, negligence, strict liability, deceit, defamation, and even i...
From time before time man has found his inner and external understanding of life through imagination, observation and memory, with memory one of man’s supreme endowments. In pre-literate times human groupings invented myths to explain... more
From time before time man has found his inner and external understanding of life through imagination, observation and memory, with memory one of man’s supreme endowments. In pre-literate times human groupings invented myths to explain phenomena that in their state of knowledge were otherwise unintelligible. These myths would assign super-human power to diverse gods to explain weather, natural disaster, human and animal, agricultural plenty or paucity, and human sagacity or folly. Social communities are “norm-governed in their very nature.” Some norms are or are interpreted as mandatory, while others are aspirational, or hortatory. Whether in the form of myth or folklore, these stories all essay to give social guidance, in the form of norms that inform or demand behavior conforming with the story’s message. From prehistoric time onward, social groups have hewn to spoken and written myth and story for two principal reasons: (1) to permit them to give logic, however primitive, to natur...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
once more into the swampy reaches of products liability reform and reconciliation. On the legislative side, in March 199 3 the Senate Commerce, Science and Transpor tation Committee received for review S. 687, the Product Liability... more
once more into the swampy reaches of products liability reform and reconciliation. On the legislative side, in March 199 3 the Senate Commerce, Science and Transpor tation Committee received for review S. 687, the Product Liability Fairness Act of 1993.1 On April 30, 1993, H.R. 1910, the Fairness in Product Liability Act,2 was forwarded joindy to the House Judiciary Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee. On May 5, a second product liability bill, H.R. 1954, was submitted simultaneously to the same two House committees.3 In May 1992 the Council of the American Law Institute decided to begin a Restatement (Third) of Torts and to make its first initiative a Restatement of Products Liability. On April 20, 1993, the Reporters for this project, Professors Aaron D. Twerski of Brooklyn Law School and James A. Henderson, Jr. of Cornell Law School, published their "Preliminary Draft Number No. 1" of the products liability component.4 After a late spring and summer of...
Research Interests:
Professor Madden evaluates the treatment of potential design and informational obligation liability for raw materials and component parts manufacturers under the Products Liability Restatement. Following an introduction to the approach... more
Professor Madden evaluates the treatment of potential design and informational obligation liability for raw materials and component parts manufacturers under the Products Liability Restatement. Following an introduction to the approach taken under the Restatement (Second) of Torts: Products Liability, and the congruent approach of the new the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability (hereinafter Third Restatement), the author evaluates the Third Restatement and the limited number of decisions that have employed it. Further to the goal of evaluating the bona fides of the Third Restatement rule, the author describes the two principal approaches to modem Tort law. The first approach is the venerable corrective justice-morality model. The second model is that of economic efficiency-deterrence. Professor Madden concludes that the Third Restatement's synthesis in terms of warnings and design duties of raw materials or component parts suppliers proves up favorably under either ...