Importance Of Tort Law

The explosion of environmental degradation over the forty years has given rise to the field of environmental law. The reduction in pollution emissions in various countries is usually credited predominantly to the government regulation. Government today tends to administer “hazardous wastes, water and air pollution, species extinction, ocean dumping, oil pollution and toxic spills”. The various forms of government regulation came in existence only after 1970. Before this time, tort laws provided a means to address various environmental injuries for many centuries.
Due to the recent development in the field of environmental law, tort law has been increasingly turned down. Many of the new laws established legal remedies that didn’t exist under tort law system. However, laws those focus on the imposition of liability in case of any toxic discharge and disposal are meant for the corrective purpose and end up overlapping with the core of tort law principles.
Tort law traditionally provided the primary means for remedying environmental harms. Despite its importance, it has always been the topic of debate among scholars. Tort’s doctrines focus on the protection of private property and tend to ignore the damage to public

The core of tort law focuses on a fault-based compensation for causing harm to someone’s individual rights. Tort law should be understood by its capacity to spread risk and to compensate the victims. However, much of the environmental law in forms of trot law is popular due to the policy objective of deterrence. Environmental tort law supports the principles of “prevention, protection, conservation, and deterrence”. The fact that tort law focuses on the distributive justice and deterrence makes it a lucrative topic of discussion among the scholars of economics and