ABSTRACT
In recent years, feminist legal theory has sought to address the law of tort and the values and assumptions which shape and inform it. This engagement has taken a number of different forms. One approach has been to focus on the formal exposition of tort law as a set of legal rules which embody and protect individual rights. Feminist (and critical legal) scholars have argued that such traditional presentations are misleading in presenting as coherent a body of knowledge which is better characterised as conflicting (or, at the very least, confused), and loaded, in the sense of privileging (often covertly) principles and values, such as individual responsibility or freedom of contract, over other desirable goals such as the promotion of social responsibility1 or the empowerment of vulnerable groups.2
