Torts, Contracts, Property, Status, Characterization, and the Conflict of Laws

Abstract

This is a formidable title, involving areas where angels fear to tread. Nevertheless, some of us are foolish enough to rush in. A few years ago Dean Prosser, for example, somehow got himself tangled up in a conflict of laws problem involving torts. "[C]onflict of laws," he said, "is a dismal swamp, filled with quaking quagmires, and inhabited by learned but eccentric professors who theorize about mysterious matters in a strange and incomprehensible jargon."' After pushing the problem around the swamp for sixty pages, he came to the startling conclusion that "something will have to be done about all this."