Advantages and Restrictions of Tort Law to Deal with Environmental Damages

Abstract

The idea prevailing in mainstream environmental law literature is that ex ante safety regulation is preferable to tort law remedies to deal with environmental issues. The main reason usually invoked to prefer ex ante regulation is that generally, tort law takes its part only after the harm has already been done; and that is considered not compatible with the objective of avoiding environmental harm. On the contrary, from the law and economics point of view, I will argue that tort law systems have some important properties that make it compatible with the goal of reducing environmental risks, and that it can be superior to ex ante regulation in avoiding environmental harm. Consequently, the purpose of this paper is drawing up a general framework to describe the relative advantages of tort law and their related conditions to deal with environmental harm.