 Tort law protects each person’s bodily integrity against both intentional and negligent interference; it protects each person against deceit by others; it protects each person’s mental health against intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent infliction of psychiatric injury; it protects each person’s reputation against misstatements by others; it protects privacy and freedom of movement against certain interferences; and it protects property against various forms of interference, including unauthorized use, willful or careless damage and, in the special case of land, against unauthorized entry and loss of usefulness. No less significantly, the common law of torts declines to protect other interests that might be thought equally pressing, such as the interest in adequate resources or a favorable context in which to pursue one’s purposes, the interest in assistance in times of urgent need, and the interest in the continued availability of objects and people on which one relies. Different explanations of the principle on which tort law decides which interests to protect will be considered below. It protects the interests that it does by articulating basic norms of conduct, most of which are continuous with familiar moral ideas. For example, the basic norm of negligence requires that people exercise appropriate care around the bodies and property of others, a moral and social norm that figures in warnings given to children at playgrounds. So, too, the basic norm of battery—which in English law is characterized as “unauthorized touching” and in American law as “harmful or offensive touching”—reflects the admonition given to children to keep their hands to themselves. In each case, tort law specifies and systematizes these familiar ideas and makes them legal rather than merely social or moral norms.