Borderlines in Private Law

Mapmaking analogies are a longstanding hallmark of private law scholarship, but the boundaries between subject areas are not always neat and tidy. Can lines be drawn between property and obligations, or common law and equity? Should tort and unjust enrichment be subordinate to the law of contract? Should equity enforce agreements that contract does not? Are equitable wrongs meaningfully different from torts? Where do these borders sit, and what does one do with areas that intersect? In this collection of essays, several of the UK's leading academic lawyers discuss these borderlines and intersections. Covering five broad topics—contract, tort, unjust enrichment, property, and equity—the contributors take varied approaches. Some argue for distinct categories and the careful maintenance of borders, while others celebrate cross-border exchanges, or say that any attempt to draw and maintain borders is a futile endeavour. In addition to the contributions from academic lawyers, the book contains responses from senior members of the UK judiciary, including Lord Sales and Lady Carr, offering their perspectives on these debates, and advice on how to structure, order, and understand private law in the context of real-world disputes. With an esteemed group of contributors, Borderlines in Private Law is at the cutting edge of modern private law scholarship, providing invaluable discussion on the interactions between contract, tort, equity, unjust enrichment, and property law.

1 - Borderlines in Private Law: An Introduction, Lord Sales
2 - Contract's Borderlines, Mrs Justice Cockerill
3 - Contract and Tort, Janet O'Sullivan
4 - Contract and Equity, Julius AW Grower
5 - Tort's Borderlines, Lady Chief Justice, Lady Carr
6 - Tort and Equity, Nicholas J McBride
7 - Tort and Unjust Enrichment, Rory Gregson
8 - Unjust Enrichment's Borderlines, Mr Justice Foxton
9 - Unjust Enrichment and Contract, William Day
10 - Unjust Enrichment and Equity, Graham Virgo
11 - Equity's Borderlines, Mr Justice Marcus Smith
12 - Property and Equity, Ben McFarlane
13 - Property and Contract, Sarah Worthington
14 - Property's Borderlines, Mr Justice Fancourt
15 - Property and Tort, Alexander Waghorn
16 - Property and Unjust Enrichment, Helen Scott
17 - Borderlines in Private Law: A Response, Robert Stevens

William Day is a Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge and a barrister at 3 Verulam Buildings, London. His research interests are in commercial law generally and particularly in the fields of economic torts, contract law, the law of restitution and private international law, which overlap with his areas of practice. At Cambridge, William teaches contract, tort and commercial law at undergraduate level and on the advanced private law paper on the LLM. Julius Grower is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Oxford and Ann Smart Fellow and Tutor in Law at St Hugh's College, Oxford. His research focuses on equity, and in particular its role within the law of obligations, and he has published articles on the law of fiduciaries, the law of agency, and constructive trusts. At Oxford, Julius teaches trusts law, contract law, commercial law, and the law of succession.