Thoughts about tort law and its compensation, deterrence and sanctioning functions

Abstract

This journal article examines the compensation, deterrence and sanctioning functions of torts law in light of modern legal, economic and scientific developments. Moreover, it refers to legal-economic reasoning and Comparative Law methodology, taking as examples of potential scenarios and cases from Latin American, European and Anglo-Saxon countries. The aim is to provide the reader with an exercise in critical reflection and to highlight how it is increasingly complex to distinguish the functions of torts law in practice. Based on the above, the authors concluded by presenting the consideration of the difficulty of discerning between the functions of torts as a valid reason to justify that the current systems aspire in the first order to the protection of the human person and not to forget their role as governing mechanism, that is, as ratio iuris.