Fault, Accidents, and the Wonderful World of Blum and Kalven

Abstract

This year Professors Walter Blum and Harry Kalven of the University of Chicago Law School published in book form the Shulman lectures they had previously given at Yale. These lectures expounded the thesis that fault might, after all, be a sound basis for liability in automobile accident cases. And, perhaps more important, they contended that none of the myriad plans which had recently been proposed, and which in one way or the other sought their basis in some form of "risk spreading," could be supported. The breadth of the attack as well as the eminence of its authors would by themselves require a careful examination of this thesis. The fact that their position is essentially contrary to most current academic thought and, nonetheless, on the whole wrong makes such examination essential.