David Ibbetson exposes the historical layers beneath the modern rules and principles of contract, tort, and unjust enrichment. Small-scale changes caused by lawyers exploiting procedural advantages in their clients' interest are described & analyzed.

NEW in paperback From the Reviews of the hardback edition: This is a fascinating and thought-provoking collection of eight essays..... Taken together they represent a coherent and compelling exposition of the English law of obligations.... One is left with the picture of an [author] ... who remains a devotee of "practical scholarship" and the deductive technique of the common law and has a grasp on its intricacies second to non." Edwin Peel, The Law Quarterly Review, 1999 "[These essays], all concerned with various aspects of contract, tort and unjust enrichment, are a pleasure to peruse, and a distinct cut above the usual lacklustre collection of past triumphs now beyond their sell-by date. Without exception they are both topical and relevant: ... together they form a readable, scholarly and eclectic mixture of exposition and polemic, of speculation and analysis" Andrew Tettenborn, The Cambridge Law Journal, 1999 "..quite simply the most convincing and complete explanation of the law of obligations that is currently available - the book is thorough, compelling, definitive, and highly important." Paul Kearns, Anglo-American Law Review, 1999 "an extremely important work, produced by a leading academic." David Wright, Adelaide Law Review

The Roman Law of Obligations presents a series of lectures delivered by the late Peter Birks as an introductory course in Roman law. Discovered in complete manuscript form following his death, the lectures are published here in paperback for the first time. The lectures present a clear conceptual map of the Roman law of obligations, guiding readers through the institutional structure of contract, delict, quasi-contract, and quasi-delict. They introduce readers to the terminology needed to understand the foundations of Roman law, and the conceptual framework of the law of obligations that left an enduring legacy on European private law. The lectures offer an invaluable introduction to Roman private law for those coming to the subject for the first time. They will also make stimulating reading for academics and lawyers interested in Roman law, European legal history, and the lasting influence of Roman law on modern private law.

The development of the law of obligations across the common law world has been, and continues to be, a story of unity and divergence. Its common origins continue to exert a powerful stabilising influence, carried forward by a methodology that places heavy weight on the historical foundations of legal principles. Divergence is, however, produced by numerous factors, including national and international human rights instruments, local statutory regimes, civil law influences, regional harmonisation, local circumstances and values and different political and legal cultures. The essays in this collection explore the forces that produce divergence, the countervailing forces that generate cohesion and consistency in the common law of obligations, and the influence that the major common law jurisdictions continue to exert over one another in this area of law. The chapters in this book were originally presented at the Seventh Biennial Conference on the Law of Obligations held in Hong Kong in July 2014. A second collection, entitled Divergences in Private Law (ISBN: 9781782256601), will focus on particular departures from the common law mainstream and the causes and effects of those deviations.

Digital Technologies and the Law of Obligations critically examines the emergence of new digital technologies and the challenges they pose to the traditional law of obligations, and discusses the extent to which existing contract and tort law rules and doctrines are equipped to meet these new challenges. This book covers various contract and tort law issues raised by emerging technologies – including distributed ledger technology, blockchain-based smart contracts, and artificial intelligence – as well as by the evolution of the internet into a participative web fuelled by user-generated content, and by the rise of the modern-day collaborative economy facilitated by digital technologies. Chapters address these topics from the perspective of both the common law and the civil law tradition. While mostly focused on the current state of affairs and recent debates and initiatives within the European Union regulatory framework, contributors also discuss the central themes from the perspective of the national law of obligations, examining the adaptability of existing legal doctrines to contemporary challenges, addressing the occasional legislative attempts to deal with the private law aspects of these challenges, and pointing to issues where legislative interventions would be most welcomed. Case studies are drawn from the United States, Singapore, and other parts of the common law world. Digital Technologies and the Law of Obligations will be of interest to legal scholars and researchers in the fields of contract law, tort law, and digital law, as well as to legal practitioners and members of law reform bodies.

The question, 'Why should I obey the law?' introduces a contemporary puzzle that is as old as philosophy itself. The puzzle is especially troublesome if we think of cases in which breaking the law is not otherwise wrongful, and in which the chances of getting caught are negligible. Philosophers from Socrates to H.L.A. Hart have struggled to give reasoned support to the idea that we do have a general moral duty to obey the law but, more recently, the greater number of learned voices has expressed doubt that there is any such duty, at least as traditionally conceived. The thought that there is no such duty poses a challenge to our ordinary understanding of political authority and its legitimacy. In what sense can political officials have a right to rule us if there is no duty to obey the laws they lay down? Some thinkers, concluding that a general duty to obey the law cannot be defended, have gone so far as to embrace philosophical anarchism, the view that the state is necessarily illegitimate. Others argue that the duty to obey the law can be grounded on the idea of consent, or on fairness, or on other ideas, such as community.

This comprehensive book provides a comparative overview of legal institutions that intersect with everyday life: contracts, unilateral legal transactions, torts, negotiorum gestio and unjust enrichment. These institutions form the core of the Law of Obligations, which is examined in this book from the perspective of all major legal traditions including Civil, Common, Islamic and Chinese law.

The Law of Trusts and Equitable Obligations provides students wtih a detailed and stimulating account of the law of equity and trusts. The fifth edition has been thoroughly updated by Warren Barr, senior lecturer at the University of Liverpool and Law Teacher of the Year 2006 in collaboration with Robert Pearce and John Stevens.

The international legal status of corporations is a contentious issue, as they do not easily fit within a system traditionally designed around states. This book assesses the ways in which corporations are bound by international human rights and environmental law, and the form their obligations take.

This book discusses the conceptual foundations of due diligence obligations and their normative function in the law of international responsibility.