Secondary Duties

Abstract

This chapter argues that civil wrongs are central to remedies. It shows that private law remedies are primarily responsive to wrongs. Furthermore, the stringency of secondary or remedial duties reflects the special moral significance of wrongs as such. This chapter attributes the tendency to discount the normative relationship between wrongs and remedies to lack of clarity on that between primary and secondary moral and legal duties. Here, the justification for secondary legal duties becomes an extension of that for secondary moral duties. This implies that the way forward lies in the clarification of the normative significance of the deontic structure of private law and, in turn, the associated moral aims of private law.