Common Law Codification: Lessons and Warnings from Twenty-First Century Australia

Abstract

Codification of tort law is a rare phenomenon in the common law world. However, building on earlier precedents, in the early 2000s, Australian jurisdictions embarked on a project of placing important general principles of negligence law into legislation. This article considers these provisions and argues that they can be considered as an attempt to codify certain parts of the law of tort. Both the process by which this codification took place, and the contents of the ‘codes’, provide interesting comparative material for civilian jurisdictions with codified tort law as well as for common law systems.