Who are the Bearers of Tort Law’s Duties?

Economic theorists of law view tort law as an institution for realizing a collective end-the maximization of social welfare.The individual duties of tort law have only instrumental significance arising from the ways they work together with other rules to produce collectively optimal outcomes.Qua legal duty-holders, persons are mere agents of the collective, following rules that further the collective end.Qua legal right-holders, they are private attorneys' general, holding others accountable for breaches of collective duties.At the moral level, there is, in effect, a single right holder-the entity embodying our collective ends.Corrective justice and civil recourse theorists, by contrast, view tort law as a site of relational rights and duties.The individual duties of tort law have intrinsic significance, expressing what persons owe to others morally speaking.And right-holders speak for themselves when they seek legal enforcement of their rights.In his deep and illuminating book, Reasonableness and Risk, Gregory Keating carves out a conception of tort law that sits on neglected middle ground between these extremes.Keating agrees with corrective justice theorists that tort law is centrally concerned with the vindication of individual rights, but he joins economic theorists in rejecting their commitment to the individual injurer as the inevitable site of the relevant duties.Thus, he rejects the idea that tort rules necessarily reflect relational duties owed by potential injurers to potential victims.In at least a range of cases, they instantiate collective duties.There is thus a deep continuity between tort law and administrative schemes that combine the direct regulation of risk with social insurance.Keating's concerns here are in