The law of tort (or extra or non-contractual liability) has been criticised for being imprecise and lacking coherence. Legal systems have sought to systemise its rules in a number of ways. While civil law systems generally place tort law in a civil code, common law systems have favoured case-law development supported by limited statutory intervention consolidating existing legal rules. In both systems, case law plays a significant role in maintaining the flexibility and adaptability of the law. This article will examine, comparatively, different means of systemising the law of tort, contrasting civil law codification (taking the example of recent French proposals to update the tort provisions of the Code civil) with common law statutory consolidation and case-law intervention (using examples taken from English and Australian law). In examining the degree to which these formal means of systemisation are capable of improving the accessibility, intelligibility, clarity and predictability of the law of tort, it will also address the role played by informal sources, be they ambitious restatements of law or other means. It will be argued that given the nature of tort law, at best, any form of systemisation (be it formal or informal) can only seek to minimise any lack of precision and coherence. However, as this comparative study shows, further steps are needed, both in updating outdated codal provisions and rethinking the type of legal scholarship that might best assist the courts.

中文翻译：

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编纂、合并、重述？如何最好地系统化现代侵权法

侵权法（或额外或非合同责任）因不精确和缺乏连贯性而受到批评。法律体系试图以多种方式将其规则系统化。虽然大陆法系通常将侵权法置于民法典中，但普通法系倾向于通过有限的法定干预来巩固现有法律规则的判例法发展。在这两个系统中，判例法在保持法律的灵活性和适应性方面发挥着重要作用。本文将比较研究将侵权法系统化的不同方法，对比民法编纂（以法国最近提出的更新侵权法条款的建议为例）民法典) 与普通法法定合并和判例法干预（使用取自英国和澳大利亚法律的示例）。在审查这些正式的系统化手段在多大程度上能够提高侵权法的可访问性、可理解性、清晰度和可预测性时，它还将解决非正式来源所发挥的作用，无论是雄心勃勃的法律重述还是其他手段。有人认为，鉴于侵权法的性质，充其量，任何形式的系统化（无论是正式的还是非正式的）都只能尽量减少缺乏精确性和连贯性。然而，正如本比较研究表明的那样，需要采取进一步措施，更新过时的法典条款，并重新考虑最能帮助法院的法律学术类型。