ABSTRACT
The principal effects of the Depression were the huge increase in unemployment, the dramatic fall in wages, and the steep drop in the price level. In the US, as in many western European countries, governments used these economic phenomena to expand their authority to regulate and direct business enterprise as well as to redistribute resources among the citizens, somewhat, but not entirely, to the lower-income. Fleming James entered law teaching in the mid-1930s, just as the country was recovering from the Depression, and within his first few years published proposals for the reform of the tort system that set forth the basic ideas of his career. James objected both to the negligence requirement that denied recovery to plaintiffs unable to establish the defendant’s fault and to the contributory negligence defense that denied recovery to plaintiffs who themselves had exhibited fault.
