The difference between Tort Law and Contract Law

I remember writing in one of my previous blog posts that there was quite a lot of overlap between Contract Law and Tort Law. Any lawyer would agree with me on that point. One good example of this is in the world of misrepresentation, one could sue the party in question in contract under misrepresentation or sue in tort under negligent misstatement.

Nevertheless, over the past term I've started to become aware of the difference between Contract Law and Tort Law. They differentiate from each other by the way in which they change. Tort is affected by the developments in science and technology, so the cases you use go out of date more quickly than the cases used in contract. In Contract Law, there are quite a few cases used that were decided in the 19th century, although the majority of cases used were decided in the 20th century or 21st century. It is true to say that there are some cases used in tort that were decided in the 19th century but it's more common to find that this is the case in contract law.

When you study negligence, you learn about the reasonable man test. This test is done to decide whether a negligence claim should succeed. So for example: if someone has an accident, the courts ask whether the reasonable man could have done anything to prevent it. This test is also used in relation to the claimant, eg. whether the claimant could have done anything more to stop themself from suffering an injury. Admittedly, this is a somewhat simplified version of what happens in tortious claims, because of course the courts have to take other factors into account such as the impact of such a decision as a precedent. But as our knowledge of the brain grows, the reasonable man test will change because the courts will have a different idea of what the reasonable man could have done to prevent something happening. This will also, no doubt have an effect on criminal law and the sentencing process. It is clear to see that negligence has already been effected by the growth in scientific knowledge, when you consider the world of psychiatric injury because this is becoming a wider area within tort law, as our knowledge of psychiatric illnesses grows.

Tort is also affected by the growth of technologies such as the internet. For example, my tort tutor was telling us the other day that social networks such as Facebook and Twitter could affect the world of defamation, if people start suing one another for posting an allegedly defamatory statement about them in a status, tweet, etc. The growth of technology has already affected the world of liability because it affects what the reasonable man can do to prevent an accident/problem occurring. No doubt this must have affected the possible extent of a driver's liability for an accident as cars have been built with more safety mechanisms, although liability in general must have been affected by the developments in technology.

Because Tort Law changes quite quickly your lecturers and tutors will stress the importance of having an up to date text book for the subject. You should always make sure that you have up to date text books in any sort of law but it's particularly important in the world of tort.

My preferred sorts of law

So now that I've covered my issues regarding university life in general, I thought I'd write about my experience of my law degree and the modules I enjoy. My modules for this year are Public Law, Contract Law, Tort Law and Frameworks of English Law (often known as English Legal Systems). I'll deal with each of these modules respectively.

Public Law

Public Law is my least favourite module because it's very theoretical. Some would say that Public Law is one of the better modules because there aren't so many cases to learn, so you have to worry less about backing up every point you make with a case. This can in a sense this can be advantageous as it means that you have less to remember for an exam but from the point of view interest, it can be quite boring because you get less of a chance to see how the law is applied and interpreted. This can be an easy module if you've done Politics at AS level but this does not mean that there won't still be a fair amount of reading to do for this module. At first I took too much advantage of the fact that I'd done politics because I seemed to get away with my knowledge from AS Politics, reading some of Colin Munro and just looking at the lecture power points when I was preparing for seminars but I soon learnt that this was a bad idea when I got a better textbook (ie. Bradley & Ewing) and soon realised that I didn't know as much as I should know. I also realised that I didn't know as much as I should know when I had to write my first essay for Public Law.

Tort and Contract Law

I've written about these two sorts of law under one heading because as all lawyers will know, they overlap quite a lot since tort law is about compensation. These two sorts of law are my favourite sorts of law because this is where you DO get to see the law being applied and interpreted. It's really interesting to see how the judges decide the outcome of a complicated case. Overall I prefer contract law but there are many people who would prefer tort law. One of the reasons why I love contract law so much is because you have the opportunity to read a lot about Lord Denning and the way in which he tried to change the law by his judgements.

Tort law should be interesting and it certainly is when you read about it but I've not found it as interesting as contract law because my first two tort law lecturers were rather unenthusiastic lecturers, who seemed to be pretty bored of having to perform the exact same lecture for another year. Nevertheless, now I've got my contract law lecturer for tort law and I'm enjoying it so much more, so you'll probably find that the sort of law you enjoy will very much depend on your lecturer.

Frameworks of English Law/English Legal systems

Not all universities will offer this module but the universities that do will often make you study this module. It's often not the same as studying the other modules because it's often just a half-module, that doesn't require that you do an exam. Nevertheless it is interesting to see how exactly the English Legal System works. You study how the EU and the Human Rights Act 1998 affects us, the general principles of how judges make their judgements, European legal methods, how laws are drafted and how judges interpret the law.

If you are reading this as someone, who has studied law or is currently studying law, I'd be interested to know which sorts of law you prefer.