Individual Responsibility

Abstract

AbstractThis section explores individual responsibility as a justification put forward to explain or support the imposition of strict liability in the four legal systems studied. First, the section explains the idea behind this argument, clarifying that a high number of conceptions of individual responsibility exist and that they treat strict liability very differently. Secondly, the section unravels the patterns of use that characterize this argument in the four legal systems, it assesses its justificatory significance and pays attention to the contexts of liability in relation to which this argument is invoked. The section shows that individual responsibility is not a particularly prominent justification for strict liability in any of the four systems considered, though with variations across them. The argument has some significance in the United States and England, where several legal scholars have a keen interest in moral philosophy and view tort law as based on norms of individual responsibility and justice. By contrast, it is basically absent from the Italian and French contexts, where strict liability is typically justified by reference to wider societal goals, and norms of individual responsibility are, at most, relevant to liability for fault.