Developing a clearer sense of the principles animating the institutional arrangements for compensation in the United States is an essential prerequisite to creating a more coherent system of protection and to assigning proper roles to tort law, private insurance and social insurance. The goal of this Article is to take the first step in this direction. The Article seeks to expose the existing relationships among tort law and the private and social insurance systems; to identify the gaps and overlaps in the existing network of compensation institutions; to analyze the obstacles to the achievement of a different regime; and to indicate the choices that must be made in constructing a coherent compensation system. Our angle of attack is more analytical than programmatic.

Citation
Kenneth S. Abraham & Lance Liebman, Private Insurance, Social Insurance, and Tort Reform: Toward a New Vision of Compensation for Illness and Injury, 93 Columbia Law Review, 75–118 (1993).
UVA Law Faculty Affiliations