Teaching torts in the age of statutes and globalisation

Most spheres of life are now regulated by statue and, after the recent spate of tort law 'reform', many of the fundamental principles of negligence law are now either contained in statue, or at least have been modified by the 'Civil Liability Acts'. The focus of this article is on some of the challenges posed by statue for those of us who teach torts, in particular. One such challenge is that there are now significant jurisdictional differences that did not previously exist. How does one deal with such differences, as well as the complexities and sheer volume of legislation, especially when teaching students from many different jurisdictional backgrounds in an era of globalisation of legal education? This article considers the options in teaching torts in the statutory context; in particular, it suggests a balanced approach between the two extremes of either teaching too much detailed content, or else teaching only general common law principles and largely avoiding statue and questions of statutory interpretation.