The Laws of Restitution

In The Laws of Restitution, Robert Stevens shows that there is no unified law of restitution or unjust enrichment. Instead, there are seven or eight different kinds of private law claim, depending on how you count them, which have nothing important in common one with another that have been grouped together by commentators. Few of these claims have anything to do with enrichment, and what is restituted differs between them. Like all private law claims, those gathered here concern (in)justice between individuals, but they have no further unity. Many of them are not based upon an agreement or a wrong, but that negative feature has no utility. "Restitution" or "unjust enrichment' should cease to be discussed as unified areas of law.

With close attention to caselaw and legislation, the work identifies and describes the various reasons for "restitution" that any properly constructed system of private law ought to recognise. It explains how the law of restitution relates to, and is bound up with, contract, torts, equity, and property law.

Robert Stevens, Professor of Private Law, University of Oxford

Professor Robert Stevens is the Herbert Smith Freehills Professor of English Private Law at the University of Oxford. Previously he was a Professor of commercial law at UCL, a lecturer in law at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow and Tutor in Law at Lady Margaret Hall. He is also a commercial barrister and has published widely on many aspects of private law, always seeking to show how the theory of academic law has practical relevance to the law as found in the courts. He is the author of Torts and Rights (OUP, 2007).

Foreword
Preface
Part I Introduction
1. Summary
2. Foundations
Part II Unjustified Performance
3. Performance
4. Reversal
5. Theory
6. Practice
Part III Conditional Performance
7. Conditions
8. Contract
Part IV Intervention in Another's Affairs
9. Discharge
10. Necessity
Part V Property and Trusts
11. Things
12. Equity: General
13. Equity: Restitution
14. Improvements
Part VI Wrongdoing
15. Wrongs
16. Profits
17. Damages
Part VII Countervailing Reasons
18. Defences
19. Illegality
Part VIII Apologia
20. Conclusion