"Motive and Intention in Tort Law", was delivered by Arthur Ripstein
On Wednesday November 3, 2010, the Tort Law Research Group hosted its first public lecture. The talk, entitled "Motive and Intention in Tort Law," was delivered by Arthur Ripstein, a recent inductee into the Royal Society of Canada and world-renowned expert on Kantian legal philosophy.
The focus of the talk was on a small but significant class of cases where the law appears to impose liability on the basis of the defendant’s malicious motive and to hold the defendant liable for an act that would attract no liability if done as a side effect of something else. Ripstein’s thesis was that a resort to utilitarianism or social morality is unnecessary to explain these cases, since liability is premised on the use of inappropriate means, rather than ends or motives.
The event was well-attended and engaging. As Dean Holloway summarized: “We had a wonderful talk to a room full of lawyers and philosophers and students.” It was a successful kick-off event for the newly-formed Research Group.
Arthur Ripstein is a professor of law and of philosophy at the University of Toronto. He was Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellow at Princeton in 1995-96, and held a Connaught fellowship in the spring term of 2000. He received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh, a degree in law from Yale, and an undergraduate degree from the University of Manitoba.
