INTRODUCTION

This book has contributed to the comparative law landscape of compensation funds in general, by identifying the key characteristics and principles of the world’s most comprehensive no-fault compensation funds. The field of no-fault compensation has been broad and ill-defined until now, despite many differing shapes of alternative liability schemes existing for decades in multiple jurisdictions. It is only in this century that legal scholars have attempted to more precisely classify these liability frameworks, better understand their function and nature, and apply scholarly rigour to their unruly growth. Very big no-fault compensation funds, which are publicly managed and publicly underwritten, are the purest and most expansive forms of no-fault or no-blame redress structures.

The four schemes analysed in this book are the largest and most expansive of their type, covering around 21.6 million people in total, with automatic entitlement to compensation for certain types of injuries, but severely restricting access to ordinary court remedies. This book is the first scholarly analysis of this category of comprehensive no-fault compensation funds. The key learnings of this book are relevant to the existing funds themselves, new funds that are coming into existence, and smaller less comprehensive funds which can define themselves in similarity or contrast with the largest exemplars of no-fault.

Three research questions were posed in the research that underpinned this text. The choice of these research questions was motivated by an observation of knowledge gaps in the current scope and practice of big no-fault compensation funds. The research questions were also motivated by the goal of evolving the understanding of the law surrounding big compensation funds a step further from Peter Cane’s bipolar abolitionist and incrementalist camps of tort law reform. The definition of a no-fault comprehensive compensation fund can be summarised as follows. It is a fund that compensates individuals for a statutorily defined comprehensive range of harms, on a no-fault basis (i.e. showing liability is not necessary to access compensation). The scheme is administered by a single public or quasi-public centralised body.