Joint Winner of the 2001 SPTL Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship! In recent years there has been enormous interest in the law of restitution,with many new books and academic articles and a number of important decisions in the courts. However, there remains great controversy and some confusion, partly for historical reasons and partly as a result of continuing differences over the principles underlying the field. There are particular difficulties over the relation of the law of restitution to other areas of law, including contract and property law. In this new and innovative work the author advances a view of the framework of fundamental principles underlying the law of restitution which offers a means of understanding the tangle of conflicting authorities, and then proceeds to examine the case law in light of it. As part of his analysis, the author suggests new approaches to understanding the areas of overlap between restitution, contract, trusts and property law.

Private Law and Property Claims sets out a distinctive analysis of some general issues in private law, including the nature of categories such as contract, tort, property, duties, and liabilities as the basis of claims in private law, and the relationship between primary rights and remedies. In the light of this analysis, the book offers a new approach to property in private law, including claims that arise to protect and recover property. It goes on to discuss the law of trusts, fiduciary relationships, and tracing; the remedial role of the trust; the nature of equity as a legal category; and the relationship between property and claims in tort to protect property. Private Law and Property Claims also exposes the misconceptions underlying the modern approach to restitution and unjust enrichment, and the problems this is causing in private law.

This book discusses the dominant corrective justice and distributive justice approaches to private law and identifies their strengths and weaknesses. It goes on to propose a general approach to private law, including contract, tort and private property, and explains how it can provide solutions to some longstanding problems. Two general ideas inform this approach: the ‘standpoint limitation’ and ‘remedial consistency’. The standpoint limitation explains the distinctive character of private law, that is to say why it is focussed mainly, though not exclusively, on particular individual interests rather than the common welfare. Remedial consistency explains the way in which remedies depend on and give effect to primary rights. The book also discusses the nature of common law legal reasoning and its relationship to the suggested understanding of private law.