The Foundations Of Unjust Enrichment

Six public lectures given by Peter Birks when he was the Centennial Visiting Fellow at the Victoria University of Wellington Law School in August and September 1999.

Introduction /Robert Chambers, Charles Mitchell, and James Penner --Correctively unjust enrichment /Ernest J Weinrib --Restitution's realism /Hanoch Dagan --The normative foundations of unjust enrichment /Dennis Klimchuk --Resisting temptations to 'justice' /Mitchell McInnes --The nature of responsibility for gain : gain, harm, and keeping the lid on Pandora's box /Kit Barker --Unjust enrichment : nearer to tort than contract /Stephen A. Smith --The meaning of loss and enrichment /James Edelman --Two kinds of enrichment /Robert Chambers --Philosophical foundations of proprietary remedies /Lionel Smith --Value, property, and unjust enrichment : trusts of traceable proceeds /James Penner --Property, unjust enrichment and defective transfers /Charlie Webb --'Mistakes of law' and legal reasoning : interpreting Kleinwort Benson v Lincoln City Council /Aruna Nair --Unjust enrichment and the idea of public law /Charles Mitchell and Peter Oliver --Unconscionable enrichment? /Prince Saprai.

This volume takes stock of the rapid changes to the law of unjust enrichment over the last decade. It offers original contributions from leading private law theorists examining the philosophical foundations of the law.

Enrichment is key to understanding the law of unjust enrichment and restitution. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the concept of enrichment and its implications for restitutionary awards. Dr Lodder argues that enrichment may be characterised either factually or legally, and explores the consequences of that distinction. In factual enrichment cases, the measure of enrichment is the objective value received. This is the basis of many awards of money had and received, quantum meruit, quantum valebat and money paid. In legal enrichment cases, the benefit is the acquisition of a specific right or the release of a specific obligation. The remedy is restitution of that right or reinstatement of that obligation. It is demonstrated that specific restitution of the defendant's legal enrichment is often the basis for resulting trusts, rescission, rectification and subrogation. This book has profound implications for understanding restitutionary awards and the relationship between the enrichment inquiry and other aspects of the law of unjust enrichment, including the 'at the expense of' inquiry and the defence of change of position.

This comprehensive yet accessible Research Handbook offers an expert guide to the key concepts, principles and debates in the modern law of unjust enrichment and restitution.

This ambitious book grapples with the complex debates ongoing on the structure of unjust enrichment, proving to be a major contribution to the field. Responding to the subject's critics, it presents a clearly articulated structure for this branch of private law, arguing that while unjust enrichment has the function of reversing defective enrichments (whether by performance or in another way) there is scope for normative pluralism in how the law achieves this. Drawing heavily on comparative material from Germany, Scotland and South Africa the book then argues for a legal framework which combines elements of the absence of basis and unjust factors approaches. It assesses how that structure can be mapped against the causes of action that make up unjust enrichment, arguing that some are performance claims - reversing a deliberate, intentional performance - and some are non-performance claims. Other claims, often included in books on unjust enrichment, such as “necessity” should be excluded from the subject area. The book concludes with a treatment of defences.

Foundations of Private Law is a treatise on the Western law of property, contract, tort and unjust enrichment in both common law systems and civil law systems. The thesis of the book is that underlying these fields of law are common principles, and that these principles can be used to explain the history and development of these areas. These underlying common principles are matters of common sense, which were given their archetypal expression by older jurists who wrote in the Aristotelian tradition. These principles shaped the development of Western law but can resolve legal problems which these older writers did not confront.

Présentation de l'éditeur : "Goff & Jones is the leading work on the law of unjust enrichment. The first edition appeared fifty years ago, in 1966, and successive editions have played a major role in establishing the central importance of the subject for private and commercial law. The text is comprehensive in coverage and written by highly respected scholars who analyse and explain the principles governing claims in unjust enrichment, demonstrating how these principles have been applied through detailed discussion of case-law. The book is frequently cited in court and continues to set the agenda for future developments in the field. The new 9th Edition is completely up-to-date and contains detailed discussion of important decisions since the last edition. Many chapters have been rewritten to take account of significant new cases, and their impact on topics including the valuation of enrichments, the recovery of benefits from remote recipients, the recovery of benefits transferred by mistake, the recovery of money paid as tax that is not due, and the content of the tracing rules and their significance for the award of proprietary remedies."

General Principles and the Coherence of International Law offers a comprehensive analysis of general principles of law, assessing their role in guaranteeing the coherence of the international legal system.

In law, gains, like losses, don't always lie where they fall. That there exists a body of law dealing with liability for gains is now settled and the circumstances in which the law requires defendants to give up their gains are well documented in the work of unjust enrichment lawyers. The same cannot be said, however, of the reasons for ordering restitution of such gains. It is often suggested that unjust enrichment's existence can be demonstrated without inquiry into these reasons, into the principles of justice it represents and invokes. Yet while we can indeed show that there exists a body of claims dealing with the recovery of mistaken payments and the like without going on to inquire into their rationale, the same cannot be said for unjust enrichment's existence as a distinct ground of such claims. For if unjust enrichment exists as a body of like cases and claims, truly independent of contract and tort, then it does so by virtue of the distinct reasons it identifies and to which these claims respond. Reason and Restitution offers an analysis of the reasons which support and shape claims in unjust enrichment and how these reasons bear on the law's application and development. The identity of these reasons matters since it establishes how, and to what extent, unjust enrichment really is independent of contract and tort, giving us a clearer understanding of unjust enrichment's relationship to these and other concepts and categories. But, more importantly, it matters to those charged with the practical tasks of deciding cases and making laws, for it is these reasons alone which can direct how judges and legislators ought respond to these claims.