Document Type
Article
Media Type
Text
Abstract
Since the 1960's, courts have embraced rules imposing "strict liability" on manufacturers for defective products while eschewing traditional negligence rules. This shift has generated considerable scholarship. Much of this scholarship has utilized economic models to analyze legal rules in terms of their economic efficiency. This article, by partitioning the "accident event space," derives and focuses on an alternative set of economically efficient "robust rules" to the inappropriate and narrow "simple rules" derived by previous scholars. Through an examination of existing case law, this article demonstrates that these economically efficient "robust rules" more accurately explain courts' notion of strict liability and courts' seemingly capricious assignment of liability under modern negligence doctrine.
First Page
1
Last Page
44
Publication Date
11-1-1991
Department
Other
ISSN
0734-1490
Language
eng
Publisher
Northern Illinois University Law Review
Recommended Citation
Sisselman, Ronald and Wade, David R.
(1991)
"The Economic Efficiency of the Robust Rules of Modern Product Liability Law,"
Northern Illinois University Law Review: Vol. 12:
Iss.
1, Article 6.
Suggested Citation
Ronald Sisselman and David R. Wade, The Economic Efficiency of the Robust Rules of Modern Product Liability Law, 12 N. Ill. U. L. Rev. 1 (1991).
