China’s Civil Code (民法典), promulgated by the National People’s Congress on 28 May 2020, took effect on 1 January 2021 and has since replaced the previous relevant legal principles embodied in various sources of civil law. Its seventh Book on Tort Liability (侵权责任) codifies the new version of Chinese tort law and has replaced the Tort Liability Law made by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress in 2009. On the one hand, the Book on Tort Liability follows to a large extent its predecessor in terms of the structure and content; on the other hand, it has introduced some substantive revisions. This chapter focuses on Chinese tort law in the era of the Civil Code. It examines three major revisions that the Civil Code brings to Chinese tort law, including redefining the concept of “tort liability”, expanding the application of punitive damages, and refining the rules of cybertort liability. It then analyses features of Chinese tort law codified in the Civil Code, specifically regarding the compensation system, the imputation system, and the multi-tier liability system. It finally discusses the approaches to developing Chinese tort law in the era of the Civil Code.

This chapter is a scholarly attempt to identify the purpose of private enforcement in EU competition law. Section 2 presents US antitrust law as the model where deterrence has a predominant role in private enforcement and which has served as a source of inspiration but not a role model for EU competition law. Section 3 presents the purpose-setting of EU competition law at the intersections of three aims: effective remedy in terms of in integrum restitutio, fundamental rights and public policy. Section 4 defines the limits of private enforcement’s deterrent function in EU competition law. The chapter’s central argument is that while private enforcement has multiple purposes in EU competition law, it represents an idiosyncratic compromise between policy-oriented deterrence and the traditional notions of civil law (full compensation, prohibition of unjust enrichment). It is demonstrated that while serving a public policy purpose and making use of the grey zone between compensatory and super-compensatory damages, EU “private competition law” does not go beyond that and remains within the confines of “compensation”. The fact that it is the deterrent side-effects that make private enforcement relevant for EU competition law and subject to special legislative attention does not call into question its compensation-oriented DNA.

Even though the three different judgments rendered in Kyoto Korean Elementary School – one criminal, by Kyoto District Criminal Court, and two civil, by Kyoto District Court and the Osaka High Court – are generally all perceived to be responses to the hate speech demonstrations that targeted the school, there is a significant difference between the three. This comparative analysis of the three judicial rulings offers important insights into how best victimization might be addressed through judicial responses. The reaction of the teachers and parents of the school exposes the limitations of a punitive approach in terms of restoring the trust of a victims in a majority Japanese community and a sense of inclusion within that community. While relationships are built over generations by shared understanding of the history of the minority Zainichi ethnic group in Japan, the punitive approach acts as a barrier to that understanding, undermining the trust so built. This chapter therefore suggests that the compensatory approach in tort, in line with the position of the Japanese Supreme Court, is likely to be more effective in remedying damage and restoring trust.

Chapter 9 includes some insights and observations from the Hon. Prof. Calabresi on the major elements of the Maimonidean theory, especially those that are similar – more or less – to contemporary tort law and economics. Calabresi discusses law, economics, and justice in our era and in Maimonides’ theory of torts, and empirical differences in the different times and their implications. Calabresi also considers the question of whether there are differences between the differential liability model presented by Maimonides, and contemporary theories of the economic analysis of tort law, expanding on deontological as opposed to utilitarian considerations according to law and economics. Calabresi deals specifically with the issue of punitive damages and discusses the innovative analysis of Maimonides compared to the multiplier approach, distributive justice as presented by Maimonides, and his optimal deterrence model. There is a great deal in Maimonides that presaged both his work in particular and sophisticated modern law and economics generally. Calabresi notes that not only can we now understand Maimonides, and the breadth of his thinking better, but we also have a clearer picture of the strengths and weaknesses of modern scholarship.

Chapter 5 will examine consequentialist elements in Maimonides’ tort theory, based primarily on what he wrote in the Guide. We will see that although Maimonides’ theory is not consequentialist in the full sense of this term, several significant elements of consequentialism are found in his theory, notwithstanding the concurrent presence of other important elements. We also saw that Maimonides’ general approach to the objectives of tort law, mainly as emerges from the Guide, reveals an extremely important consequentialist objective – prevention of acts causing damage and deterrence. After a discussion of this important aspect of Maimonides’ tort theory, we will proceed to a comparative examination of the similarities and the differences between this theory and the modern theories of law and economics regarding torts, including the theories of some of the fathers of the economic analysis of law in general and of tort law in particular – Calabresi and Posner. We also present a certain proximity between the consequentialist approach of Maimonides and the modern approaches to punitive damages. We saw a certain similarity between his approach and the economic multiplier approach, but in our view, there is also similarity to the moral idea of societal redress in extracompensatory damages.

Chapter 8 draws some cautious lessons from a contemporary analysis of torts for Maimonides’ theory of torts and vice versa. We offer a full conceptual description of the Maimonidean theory, based on the previous chapters, and also characterize Maimonides as a pluralistic-differential scholar. We show that, as opposed to contemporary approaches to torts, which emphasize law and economics and corrective justice, Maimonides’ approach should be characterized as pluralistic and not monistic. After showing how contemporary approaches shed light on Maimonides’ approach, we can move in the opposite direction; that is, we can draw some careful – but important – lessons from the Maimonidean theory for contemporary tort law. We suggest one possible way of learning lessons from Maimonides’ theory for contemporary law, which may help enrich the current tort law discourse. The argument that Maimonides is a true pluralist enables us to draw a careful comparison between Maimonidean and contemporary pluralistic approaches to tort law, such as those of Glanville Williams, Fleming James Jr., Izhak Englard, Gary Schwartz, Mark Geistfeld, Christopher Robinette, Steven Burton, John Goldberg, and Benjamin Zipursky. This comparison reveals differences among the approaches, as well as advantages and disadvantages of each approach.

This chapter discusses the law and policy of monetary awards — including exemplary damages and litigation cost recoveries — that go beyond the compensatory damages to which prevailing parties in patent litigation are normally entitled. Up to treble damages are authorized in the United States for knowing infringement, but attorney fees are awarded only in exceptional cases. The rest of the world tends toward the opposite: Attorney fees are awarded as a matter of course, but punitive damages are generally prohibited as against public policy.This chapter discusses the theory, law, and policy of enhanced damages and attorney fee awards in the United States, Europe, and Asia. While the availability of enhanced damages and fees can bring accused infringers that might otherwise “hold out” to the table, care must also be taken to ensure that it does not discourage productive learning from patents or challenges to overbroad and vague patents. Rather than endorse any single set of doctrinal rules, there is a recommendation for further research into a number of unanswered questions about current and potential future configurations, in order to inform future policymaking.

Using illustrations from the Yasmin/Yaz and asbestos proceedings, Chapter 1 introduces multidistrict litigation and its inhabitants, situating individual and class-action litigation in the rearview mirror. As class certification wanes, so too does formal judicial oversight aimed at thwarting self-dealing lawyers. This is not, however, a revival of individual litigation where a plaintiff can effectively monitor her own suit. To the contrary, when a plaintiff retains an attorney, she will typically be one of the many clients that her lawyer “warehouses.” Nevertheless, judges embrace a push for settlements that exists across all civil cases, but can result in ethically dubious deals in the multidistrict litigation context. When private settlements occur on the back end and tort-reform measures like punitive damage caps deter lawyers from suing on the front end, litigation’s ability to unearth information on corporate wrongdoing and generate public goods like precedent, transparency, and equal treatment is in peril.