Part II
Jacques H. HERBOTS, Professor Emeritus, former dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Louvain, Legal Principles of Civil Liability in European and Common Law
This paper confronts legal principles of civil liability in European Law with the specificity of tort in Common Law.
Legal principles of civil liability can be found only on European Law. Civil liability is build upon the rule that there has to be a reparation of the damage produced wrongdoing. Common Law does not know such general and abstract principles. Rather to the contrary, Common Law has developed a group of different torts, each with its own definition and constitutive elements.
The author is skeptical about the usefullness of a codification in the area of torts, as advanced by some legal scholars.
Keywords: comparative law, civil liability, tort, codification
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