 Tort law has been an object of philosophical reflection at least since Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. It also figured in medieval discussions by Thomas Aquinas and Francisco Suárez (Gordley 2006), as well as in early modern discussions of the law of obligations by writers such as Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf. Aristotle distinguished between the role of a court in providing a remedy in a private dispute from the role of other public officials in seeing to it that some good or burden was allocated in accordance with a specified criterion. Justinian’s Digest (533), a compilation of Roman law from the sixth century, included extended discussions of tort cases and principles. Civil law jurisdictions also drew heavily on the writings of legal scholars. Historically, the common law did not begin with any attempt at theoretical systematization, but rather developed through the decisions of judges who considered it important to limit their reasoning to the particular case and pleading before them. Until the nineteenth century, English law had highly specialized “forms of action” determining the ways in which the plaintiff could plead a case. The forms of action did not classify various specific wrongs as falling under a general category of tort. Academic writing tended to stay close to the doctrine, with only occasional general pronouncements and with little by way of systematic elaboration (Seavey 1942). Some writers continue to express doubts about whether tort law can be systematized (Weir 2006; Murphy 2019; Stapleton 2021; for further discussion, see Thomas 2019).