Unjustified Enrichment

The use of American POW's as slave labor by Japanese companies is the great unresolved issue of the Second World War in the Pacific. Unjust Enrichment provides a forum for American servicemen to tell their own stories, while Linda Holmes gives the reader the historic context to recognize the seriousness of the crimes. Bio: Linda Goetz Holmes has been interviewing and writing about World War II prisoners in the Pacific for over 30 years. She is the first historian appointed to the U.S. Government Interagency Working Group, formed in 1999 under the aegis of the National Archives to locate and declassify material about World War II war crimes.

Unjustified enrichment has been one of the most intellectually vital areas of private law. There is, however, still no unanimity among civil-law and common-law legal systems about how to structure this important branch of the law of obligations. Several key issues are considered comparatively in this 2002 book, including grounds for recovery of enrichment, defences, third-party enrichment, as well as proprietary and taxonomic questions. Two contributors deal with each topic, one a representative of a common-law system, the other a representative of a civil-law or mixed system. This approach illuminates not just similarities or differences between systems, but also what different systems can learn from one another. In an area of law whose territory is still partially uncharted and whose borders are contested, such comparative perspectives will be valuable for both academic analysis of the law and its development by the courts.

Unjustified enrichment has been one of the most intellectually vital areas of private law. There is, however, still no unanimity among civil-law and common-law legal systems about how to structure this important branch of the law of obligations. Several key issues are considered comparatively in this 2002 book, including grounds for recovery of enrichment, defences, third-party enrichment, as well as proprietary and taxonomic questions. Two contributors deal with each topic, one a representative of a common-law system, the other a representative of a civil-law or mixed system. This approach illuminates not just similarities or differences between systems, but also what different systems can learn from one another. In an area of law whose territory is still partially uncharted and whose borders are contested, such comparative perspectives will be valuable for both academic analysis of the law and its development by the courts.

This new edition of Unjust Enrichment by the editor of the Clarendon Law Series, is a fully updated, clear and concise account of the law of unjust enrichment. It attempts to move away from the use of obscure terminology inherited from the past. This text is the first book to insist on the switch from restitution to unjust enrichment, from response to event. It organises modern law around five simple questions: Was the defendant enriched? If so, was it at the claimant's expense? If so, was it unjust? The fourth question is then what kind of right the claimant has, and the fifth is whether the defendant has any defences. This second edition was revised and updated by Peter Birks before his death from cancer on 6 July 2004 at the age of 62. It represents the final thinking of the world's leading authority on the subject.

This book is a sophisticated comparative analysis of the doctrine of unjust enrichment in the North American and Jewish legal systems, and in international law. By offering an explanatory theory which brings to light the normative underpinnings of the doctrine, it facilitates the prediction of legal outcomes and supplies the necessary tools for evaluating existing legal rules. Applying both theoretical analysis and comparative legal techniques, the study claims that the choice of compensation arising from a claim of unjust enrichment is not a matter of legal technicality. Instead it describes how the legal choice of a pecuniary remedy can be seen to embody a choice between competing values. This decision, writes Dagan, is implicated in the prevailing background ethos of the society at issue, and is deeply influenced by its own complex conceptions of self and of community.

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 second volume of 'Unjustified Enrichment' follows on from the first edition on enrichment by deliberate conferral. This volume covers enrichment acquired by any other manner. The text provides an authoritative and comprehensive account of the subject, and will establish a scheme of the precise features and limits of claims of unjustified enrichment.