CORRECTIVE JUSTICE AND THE BASIS OF TORT LIABILITY
The concept of corrective or rectificatory justice is properly traced to Aristotle, who maintains that corrective justice is the area of justice which prescribes restoration of an equilibrium between an injurer and his victim? Coleman rejects Aristotle's account, asserting that his own account "explains a good deal more of tort law" than would Aristotle's, and suggesting that Aristotle failed to see that corrective justice merely requires that wrongful gains and wrongful losses be annulled. 4 Corrective justice says nothing, on Coleman's view, about an injurer compensating his victim for an injury and serves merely "to protect a distribution of holdings (or entitlements) from distortions that arise from unjust enrichments and wrongful losses. "5 Thus it is Coleman's view that when a motorist causes an accident through his negligence, he must give up any ill gotten benefits he thereby obtains, which, as Coleman recognizes, ordinarily does not require that the negligent motorist give up anything; it is also his view that corrective justice imposes no duty upon the negligent motorist apart from the duty to disgorge ill gotten benefits. Corrective justice does require, on this account, that the accident victim be compensated, though not necessarily by the person who injured him. It is nonetheless a fact, Coleman acknowledges, that the tort system ordinarily requires a torffeasor to compensate his victim. As he must, Coleman tries to explain that fact without invoking corrective justice.
His explanation takes the form of a justification of the tort practice which permits the imposition of liability on a person whose morally blameless but legally faulty conduct causes an injury. 6 Since moral blameworthiness is ordinarily not an element in proof of a tort case, we may regard Coleman's argument as rather general in scope. If the argument succeeds, it will explain why we may ordinarily require tortfeasors to compensate their victims. Versions of the argument occur