Atiyah's Accidents, Compensation and the Law (2006) is a legal text, which marked the first of Cambridge University Press's "Law in Context" series. It was originally authored by English legal scholar, Patrick Atiyah in 1970 and has been taken over by Professor Peter Cane since the 4th edition in 1987. The thrust of the book is that the law of tort should be abolished, especially as relates to the law on personal injuries, and should be replaced with a no fault state compensation system. Its arguments are in tune with the establishment in the 1970s of such a system in New Zealand, with the Accident Compensation Commission. After handing over the book, Atiyah changed his mind, and wrote The Damages Lottery (1997) where instead of a state run system, he advocated abolition of tort and that people should buy personal safety insurance. Professor Cane, however has kept Atiyah's Accidents in line with the title's original thesis.

Criticism of the fault principle

One of the book's main point is its stinging criticism of the fault principle. This is the principle that finds the party that is to blame before compensating the victim in personal injury cases. This then implies that if fault cannot be attributed, there can be no attribution of liability, and thus a victim of an accident may not receive compensation. Atiyah proposed six major criticisms of the system, which suggest that liability in personal injury claims should not focus on the relationship between the claimant and defendant, but between the parties and society. His examples were primarily concerned with road traffic accidents