Strict Liability and the Geometry of Risk: Responsibility Without Fault

Strict liability is commonly described as an exception to fault-based responsibility. This article argues that such a characterization misunderstands its structural role in private law. Strict liability is not a deviation from the logic of responsibility, but a distinct configuration within the same geometry of risk that underlies contract and tort.

This paper proposes that liability in private law is organized around the allocation of risk within bounded perspectives of responsibility. In fault-based regimes, responsibility arises when an actor generates an unreasonable or directed risk. In strict liability, by contrast, the legal system pre-allocates certain categories of risk to the actor regardless of fault, effectively fixing those risks within the actor's responsibility radius from the outset.

By analyzing abnormally dangerous activities, product liability, and vicarious liability, the article shows that strict liability operates as an institutional decision about where particular risk types belong in the geometry of responsibility. Fault is therefore not the foundation of liability, but one structural pathway through which responsibility may arise. Strict liability reveals the deeper organizing principle of private law: the allocation of risk within legally constructed boundaries of responsibility.