Basic Protection and the Future of Negligence Law

Coming to full flower only in the nineteenth century,' negligence law is still a tender young plant among the hardy redwoods of legal history. Yet the jeopardy in which it stands is due not to its youth but to its aging inflexibility-to its failure to adapt to the era of the automobile. This is not to say that its end is at hand. Rather, a future of some kind for negligence law seems assured.

The questions in doubt are what kind and for how long. The surest way of causing it to be inglorious and brief is to continue to ask more of this body of law than it can deliver, particularly in relation to compensating traffic victims.