The Burdens of All: Progressive Origins of Accident Cost Socialization in Tort Law, 1870-1920

Scholars who have studied the Progressive Movement’s contributions to American law have paid little attention to its impact on tort law. This Article helps fill the gap by examining the ways in which Progressivism shaped the rise of employer liability law, workers compensation, and comparative negligence during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The Article places these reforms within the broader social history of American tort law—a gradual, often tortuous transition from free-labor beliefs that the law should encourage personal responsibility and economic growth above all else to a realization that injuries are an unavoidable cost of economic modernization, accompanied by a long-running debate over the extent to which the costs of accidents should be socialized.