A Public Choice Analysis of the Evolution of Tort Law:

A bstract . Economic analysis has generally concluded that most loss shifting under current standards of personal injury liability is allocatively non- Pareto optimal. The economic and legal arguments that support this conclusion are reviewed and an explanation is offered of why our legal system has evolved over time into an inefficient institution. It is argued that state sponsored lotteries and current personal injury liability laws have enough In common to be similarly viewed as a system of income redistribution demanded by the citizenry and supplied by the public sector.