scholarly journals What's Wrong with Restitution

1969 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 221 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Stevens ◽  
Jason W. Neyers
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Simple Formulation ◽  
Unjust Enrichment ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Way

The law of restitution has developed out of the law of quasi-contract and the law of constructive trust. Inadequate attention to the logic and coherence of doctrines in the law of restitution, however, renders this new law as opaque and confused as its predecessor. This is largely due to the remedial mentality of the common law. The remedy to the remedial mentality is to concentrate future efforts in stating doctrine on defining rights, not remedies. The precedent for this type of change in method is the transformation that occurred in contract and tort over the past 100 years, inspired, in part, by civilian theories of private law. The right that generates the remedy restitution is the cause of action in unjust enrichment. It arises where there has been a non-consensual receipt and retention of value, that is, a receipt and retention of value that occurs without "juristic reason." "Nonconsensual" means by mistake, by theft or by finding. There are a number of problems in the method of the common law tradition which stand in the way of recognizing this simple formulation: (a) The inherent expansiveness of "restitution " and "unjust enrichment" if these terms are not rigorously defined; (b) The lack of serious competition for the expansive versions of the subject, on a number of fronts; (c) The lack of a clear direction in the efforts to reform the law of quasi-contract and constructive trust; (d) The deeply embedded nature of the quasi-contract thinking; (e) Poor analysis in some areas of the law of contract and (f) Tort; and (g) The lack of an explicit agency of reform in the tradition.

Illegal Earnings

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-80
Author(s):  
James Goudkamp ◽  
Lorenz König
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
Private Law ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Considerable Promise ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law

AbstractThis article addresses the principles of tort law that govern claims in respect of lost illegal earnings. It focuses on common law jurisdictions (and the law in the United Kingdom in particular) where such claims, despite apparently being commonplace, have been largely ignored by academics. It describes the existing law and calls in aid in this regard a four-fold taxonomy of cases. The article then turns attention to how claims in respect of lost illegal earnings ought to be decided. At this juncture, the article looks to ideas emanating from German tort law, which has developed a highly sophisticated jurisprudence on the subject of illegal earnings. The German approach, stated simply, requires tort law to defer to rules in other departments of private law. If, for example, contract law would not protect an interest that a claimant has in a particular transaction by reason of the transaction being tainted with illegality, tort law will not allow a claimant indirectly to obtain the benefits of that transaction via a claim for lost illegal earnings. It is argued that the German solution holds considerable promise and merits consideration as a serious alternative to the significantly more complicated principles that the common law courts have developed, which principles currently lack any thoroughgoing rationalisation.

The New Private Law and Intellectual Property

2020 ◽  
pp. 408-426
Author(s):  
Molly Shaffer Van Houweling
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Concepts And Categories ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Courts ◽  
Legal Concepts

This chapter studies intellectual property (IP). A hallmark of the New Private Law (NPL) is attentiveness to and appreciation of legal concepts and categories, including the traditional categories of the common law. These categories can sometimes usefully be deployed outside of the traditional common law, to characterize, conceptualize, and critique other bodies of law. For scholars interested in IP, for example, common law categories can be used to describe patent, copyright, trademark, and other fields of IP as more or less “property-like” or “tort-like.” Thischapter investigates both the property- and tort-like features of IP to understand the circumstances under which one set of features tends to dominate and why. It surveys several doctrines within the law of copyright that demonstrate how courts move along the property/tort continuum depending on the nature of the copyrighted work at issue—including, in particular, how well the work’s protected contours are defined. This conceptual navigation is familiar, echoing how common law courts have moved along the property/tort continuum to address disputes over distinctive types of tangible resources.

COHABITANTS IN PRIVATE LAW: TRUST, FRUSTRATION AND UNJUST ENRICHMENT IN ENGLAND, GERMANY AND CANADA

2013 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 629-665 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Intimate Relationships ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Party Autonomy ◽  
Unjust Enrichment ◽  
Legislative Action ◽  
The Law ◽  
Canadian Provinces ◽  
The Right ◽  
English Canadian

AbstractNeither in England, nor in Germany, nor in all Canadian provinces, does the law provide specific rules for the redistribution of property for unmarried cohabitants after the breakdown of their relationship. Instead, courts apply the law of trusts, contract and unjust enrichment with an eye to the characteristics of intimate relationships, as, for example, in decisions like the EnglishJones v Kernott([2011] UKSC 53) and the CanadianKerr v Baranow(2011 SCC 10). This article compares English, Canadian, and German case law and evaluates it both from a doctrinal perspective and as a part of a general approach towards cohabitation. The article concludes with an appeal for legislative action that strikes the right balance between party autonomy and protection of the weaker party.

1. The historical origins of the trust

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
JE Penner
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
The Core ◽  
Administrative Power ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Historical Origins

Titles in the Core Text series take the reader straight to the heart of the subject, providing focused, concise, and reliable guides for students at all levels. This chapter traces the historical roots of the trust. The law of trusts is the offspring of a certain English legal creature known as ‘equity’. Equity arose out of the administrative power of the medieval Chancellor, who was at the time the King’s most powerful minister. The nature of equity’s jurisdiction and its ability to provide remedies unavailable at common law, the relationship between equity and the common law and the ‘fusion’ of law and equity, and equity’s creation of the use, and then the trust, are discussed.

Defaming the Dead

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don Herzog
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
Dead Person ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Way

If you defame the dead, even someone who recently died, tort law does not think that’s an injury: not to the grieving survivors and not to the dead person. This book argues that defamation is an injury to the recently dead. It explores history, including the shaping of the common law, and offers an account of posthumous harm and wrong. Along the way, it offers a sustained exploration of how we and the law think about corpse desecration.

‘Furiously Mad’: Vagrancy Law and a Sub-Group of the Disorderly Poor

Rural History ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
AUDREY ECCLES
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Problem ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
The Public ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law

Abstract:Madness has been a social problem from time immemorial. Wealthy lunatics were made royal wards so that their estates would be looked after, and the common law very early admitted madness and idiocy as conditions justifying the exemption of the sufferer from punishments for crime. But the vast majority of lunatics have never been either criminal or wealthy, and many wandered about begging, unwelcome in any settled community. Finally, in the eighteenth century, the law made some attempt to determine a course of action which would protect the public and theoretically also the lunatic. This legislation and its application in practice to protect the public, contain the lunatic, and deal with the nuisance caused by those ‘disordered in their senses’, form the subject of this article. Much has been written about the development of psychiatry, mainly from contemporary medical texts, and about the treatment of lunatics in institutions, chiefly from nineteenth-century sources, but much remains to be discovered from archival sources about the practicalities of dealing with lunatics at parish level, particularly how they were defined as lunatics, who made such decisions, and how they were treated in homes and workhouses.

scholarly journals RZYMSKA SOCIETAS A PARTNERSHIP SYSTEMU COMMON LAW

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 151
Author(s):  
Ewa Dziuban
Keyword(s):  
Early Stage ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Similar Solution ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Legal Form ◽  
Exact Answer ◽  
Outer World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Way

ROMAN SOCIETAS AND THE COMMON LAW PARTNERSHIPThe construction of roman societas in comparison with the common law partnership was the subject of authors inquiry. The idea was to find whether these two contracts, being created in a very different time and situation, with ages of various experiences between them, could, in some way, resemble. In other words - is that possible that the similar aim of the contracts determined the shape of the legal form?Both constructions were analysed stressing their most significant points.The comparison was led due to the pattern established by the author, created to make it more readable.As a result every characteristic was composed of the following parts:1. description of the contract’s nature;2. types of the contract;3. inner relations between partners;4. societas/partnership in relation to outer world;5. dissolving the contract.On this basis author examined the findings.The pointed conclusions seemed to provide a very interesting start for further inquiries. The reason for this is, as it occurred, that between two legal systems, existing in separate ages and conditions, with settled opinion on their incompatibility, more than few similarities can be found.Author did not give a straight answer to the question why these similarities really exist. In fact she provides at least two possible explanations without prejudice.Actually to give a more exact answer deeper studies shall be undertaken. However even at this very early stage it can be said, that both constructions, even though so faraway in various dimensions from each other, developed compatible solutions on their way to find the best idea how the goal can be achieved. And this goal, as it occurred from the contracts’ nature, seemed to be analogous.Is the similar solution a question of reception? Or maybe both systems parallel found the way, which occurred to be the best and, in the same time, convergent? Maybe the catalogue of best solutions is closed and sooner or later every system shall come to it?These questions must be asked. Even if or especially that the answers are neither easy nor immediate.Author finished this first stage of her studies leaving them open but with the reservation that inquiry will be continued.

scholarly journals Nature and Effects of Consent with Respect to the Right to Life and the Right to Physical and Mental Inegrity in the Medical Field: Criminal and Private Law Aspects

1969 ◽  
pp. 293 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. G. Castel
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
Medical Field ◽  
Treat Ment ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Right

The purpose of this article is to analyze the nature and effects of patient's or subject's consent to therapeutic and non-therapeutic treat ment and research in Canadian criminal law, and in the private law of Quebec and the common law provinces, and to propose guidelines for possible legislation.

scholarly journals Bournewood: Law and capacity

1999 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 177-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Devakumar
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Community Mental Health ◽  
Mental Disorder ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Appeal Court ◽  
Assessment And Treatment ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Right ◽  
Health Trust

The Law Lords in June 1998 overturned the judgement in the matter of L. v. Bournewood. The Law Lords, on a majority decision, were of the opinion that a compliant incapacitated patient such as L. does not need the formal powers of the Mental Health Act and admission to hospital and subsequent assessment and treatment for mental disorder can be based on the common law principles of necessity. However, this position is quite contrary to the Appeal Court judges' view, “The right of a hospital to detain a patient for treatment for mental disorder is to be found in, and only in, the 1983 Act, whose provisions apply to the exclusion of the common law principle of necessity” (L. v. Bournewood Community Mental Health Trust, 1997).

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