Exploring Private Law

This collection of original essays from leading scholars explores contemporary issues in private law.

Elise Bant (Edited by), Matthew Harding (Edited by)

9780521764353, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 September 2010

524 pages, 2 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.8 cm, 0.95 kg

Inspired by recent debate, the purpose of this collection of essays on private law doctrines, remedies and methods is to celebrate and illustrate the contribution that both 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' methods of reasoning make to the development of private law. The contributors explore a variety of topical subjects, including judicial approaches to 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' methods; teaching trusts law; the protection of privacy in private law; the development of the law of unjust enrichment; the private law consequences of theft; equity's jurisdiction to relieve against forfeiture; the nature of fiduciary relationships and obligations; the duties of trustees; compensation and disgorgement remedies; partial rescission; the role of unconscionability in proprietary estoppel; and the nature of registered title to land.

Introduction Elise Bant and Matthew Harding
Part I. Method: 1. Do top-down and bottom-up reasoning ever meet? Keith Mason
2. Internationalisation or isolation: the Australian cul de sac? The case of contract law Paul Finn
3. The Australian Law of Restitution: has the High Court lost its way? Andrew Burrows
4. Privacy and private law: developing the common law of Australia Michael Tilbury
5. Towards legal pragmatism: breach of confidence and the right to privacy Megan Richardson
6. Teaching trust law in the twenty-first century Tang Hang Wu
Part II. Unjust Enrichment: 7. The impact of legal culture on the law of unjustified enrichment: the role of reasons Helen Scott and Daniel Visser
8. Natural obligations and unjust enrichment Mitchell McInnes
9. Causality and abstraction in the common law Birke Häcker
10. Trust and theft Robert Chambers
Part III. Equity and Trusts: 11. What is left of equity's relief against forfeiture? Sarah Worthington
12. Contracts, fiduciaries and the primacy of the deal Anthony Duggan
13. Four fiduciary puzzles James Edelman
14. Good faith: what does it mean for fiduciaries and what does it tell us about them? Richard Nolan and Matthew Conaglen
15. Trustees' duties to provide information Lusina Ho
Part IV. Remedies: 16. The measurement of compensation claims against trustees and fiduciaries Lionel Smith
17. Substitutability and disgorgement damages in contract Katy Barnett
18. Unconscionability and proprietary estoppel remedies Andrew Robertson
19. Partial rescission: disentangling the seedlings but not transplanting them Peter Watts
20. Of horses and carts: theories of indefeasibility and category errors in the Torrens system Kelvin Low.

Subject Areas: Torts / Delicts [LNV], Equity & trusts [LNL], Contract law [LNCJ], Private / Civil law: general works [LNB]