At the core of the tort preemption cases before the U.S. Supreme Court is the extent to which state law can impose more stringent liability standards than federal law. The express preemption cases focus on whether the state law requirements are “different from, or in addition to” the...

This Article focuses on public nuisance’s innovative use as a means of recovering purely financial losses between non-contracting parties (i.e., “strangers”), in particular where the economic loss rule potentially bars recovery. The Article proposes a new approach to reconciling the torts...

This chapter — to be included in Research Handbook on the Economics of Torts (Arlen ed., Kluwer, forthcoming 2012) — assesses economic rationales for punitive damages in light of contemporary empirics and doctrine. The primary economic rationale for supra-compensatory damages is optimal...

A subtle shift has taken place in the mechanics of preemption, the doctrine that determines when federal law displaces state law. In the past, Congress was the leading actor, and courts and commentators focused almost exclusively on the precise wording of its statutory directives as a clue to...

The fraud caveat is ubiquitous in key debates on the regulatory role of tort law: Even the most ardent supporters of either the state-based regulatory compliance defense to tort claims against product manufacturers, or the more powerful wholesale federal preemption of state tort law by...