Tort law and accountability: how tort law facilitates and enhances ideals of accountability

The notion of accountability expresses ideals of responsible governance (‘accountability as virtue’) and the need for legal mechanisms to reinforce these ideals (‘accountability as answerability’). Tort law can play an important role in promoting both aspects of accountability. It offers actors possibilities to call upon state power to hold their wrongdoers legally accountable and to impose legal mechanisms of redress. Tort law offers possibilities to develop notions of responsibility, thereby potentially contributing to a better understanding of, on the one hand, the applicable responsibilities and, on the other hand, the actual actions of actors. Tort law, therefore, also promotes transparency. Moreover, by providing legal protection in cases of issues that are supposedly not adequately addressed by the government, tort law can address democratic shortcomings. It develops notions of legal responsibility independently of political choices and preferences, and expresses that compliance with these legal responsibilities should be independent of democratic will.