Space tourism began in 2001 when an American investment manager paid the Russian space agency US$20 million to travel to the International Space Station on a Soyuz rocket. In 2021, three US-based companies began launching tourists on their own rockets: Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX. The emergence of Space tourism raises difficult issues. One such issue is the environmental effects of launches on the atmosphere and the corresponding implications for climate change. Space tourism also raises difficult questions of international law, including, where does space begin? Who gets to call themselves an ‘astronaut’? Do states have a duty to rescue tourists stranded in space?

Farwell v. Keaton is the classic torts case that has introduced generations of law students to the “no-duty-to-rescue” rule which allows individuals to refrain from aiding persons in peril. The case is an exception, imposing a duty on a teenage boy who failed to come to the aid of his companion who died after being beaten by a group of boys. The court emphasized the relationship between the parties and the fact that the defendant had rendered some initial aid to his friend. The rewritten feminist opinion also imposes a duty but replaces the myriad common-law exceptions to the “no-duty-to-rescue” rule. Embracing a humanitarian approach based on the circumstantial connection between the parties in the case, the feminist judgment imposes liability whenever failure to do so would “shock the conscience,” placing US tort law on par with the law in many European nations. The accompanying commentary recharacterizes the case as one involving sexual harassment and stalking, focusing on the behavior of the defendant and his companion who set the chain of events in motion when they followed two teenaged girls who later complained to the assailants.

We address the deontological, philosophical, pedagogical and religious foundations of Maimonides’ tort theory. Maimonides regards removing the wrong as an important aim of tort law, alongside other aims, which are directed at the meta-aim of the “welfare of the body.” We looked at the similarities and the differences between this aim and the theories of prominent modern corrective justice theories, such as those presented by Weinrib. Maimonides emphasizes educational, punitive, religious (prohibition against causing damage) and social aspects that shape this aim of “removing the wrong” in particular, and tort law in general. Therefore, the application of tort law and the conception of corrective justice is wider according to Maimonides’ approach than according to narrow conceptions of corrective justice that place the emphasis on the correlative framework of the damager/victim. Tort law, according to Maimonides, is designed not only to restore the status quo ante, but to repair the qualities of the damager, to shape him as a person who contributes to a society which dutifully observes the religious precepts and is careful not to cause damage to the property and to the body of another. Moreover, Maimonides incorporates distributive considerations into his theory, particularly on the subject of compensation.