Abstract
Scholars who have studied the Progressive Movement’s contributions to
American law have paid little attention to its impact on tort law. This Article
helps fill the gap by examining the ways in which Progressivism shaped the rise
of employer liability law, workers compensation, and comparative negligence
during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The Article places
these reforms within the broader social history of American tort law—a
gradual, often tortuous transition from free-labor beliefs that the law should
encourage personal responsibility and economic growth above all else to a
realization that injuries are an unavoidable cost of economic modernization,
accompanied by a long-running debate over the extent to which the costs of
accidents should be socialized.
Repository Citation
Joseph A. Ranney,
The Burdens of All: Progressive Origins of Accident Cost Socialization in Tort Law, 1870-1920,
105 Marq. L. Rev. 397
(2021).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/mulr/vol105/iss2/6