ABSTRACT
Occasionally, strict liability has been justified on the basis of risk and insurance.44 But, on the whole, it is treated with a certain suspicion by judges who seem unsure either of the relationship between fault and risk in a modern industrial society45 or of their own role in the litigation process.46 Indeed, in the very case that rejected a doctrine of strict liability for dangerous things, the House of Lords, through the voice of Lord Macmillan, claimed that the task of the courts, including their own task, was nothing more than that of deciding particular cases between particular litigants.47 There was, he continued, no duty to rationalise the law of England or to produce a code of principles founded upon legal consistency.48 Such a duty is for Parliament. Now the problem with this attitude is twofold. First, even when Parliament does intervene with a strict liability statute there is a danger that such legislation will be narrowly construed49 with the result that any inherent or underlying idea such as risk or equality50 has little chance of emerging from the jurisprudence (cf Chapter 13 § 1(e)).
