Private Law and Practical Reason Essays on John Gardner's Private Law Theory

The contributions to this edited volume engage with John Gardner's philosophical work on private law. The content is divided into three parts. The first part gathers contributions on general theoretical issues that bear upon private law. The second part is concerned with Gardner's well-known views on responding to wrongs and the justification of reparative duties - an issue that spans all of private law. The third part turns to theoretical issues within particular areas of private law. Its focus is Gardner's focus: tort law, but it also includes chapters on contract law and equity. The primary aim of Private Law and Practical Reason is to facilitate a critical assessment of the private law thinking of one of the most important legal philosophers of the last fifty years. Gardner's contributions to private law theory are recognised to be amongst the most significant and philosophically rich. This work assembles a group of contributors with diverse theoretical commitments, many of whom have not directly engaged previously with Gardner's work, and is intended to act as a reference point for central debates in private law theory, such as the role of moral duties, the justification of reparative obligations, and, more broadly, the role of reasons in private law.

1 - Introduction: John Gardner s Philosophy of Private Law
2 - Gardner on Duties in Tort
3 - Are There Any Moral Duties?
4 - Reasons to Try
5 - Legality, Ought and Can
6 - Gardner on Justice
7 - Distributing Corrective Justice
8 - Deterrence in Private Law
9 - Finishing the Reparative Job: Victims Duties to Wrongdoers
10 - Wrongs, Remedies, and the Persistence of Reasons: Re-Examining the Continuity Thesis
11 - The Next Best Thing to a Promise
12 - The Place of Regret in the Law of Torts
13 - Primary Duty / Secondary Duty?
14 - The Role of Plaintiffs in Private Law Institutions
15 - Private Law Rights and Powers of Waiver
16 - How is Tort Law Political?
17 - The Value of the Neighbour Relation
18 - The Liberal Promise of Contract
19 - The Reasonably Loyal Person
20 - Corrective Justice and the Right to Hold on to What One Has

Haris Psarras is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Southampton. Before joining Southampton Law School, he was Richard Fellingham Lecturer and Fellow in Law at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. Before that, he was Teaching Fellow in Legal Theory at the University of Edinburgh. He has written on general jurisprudence and private law theory. Sandy Steel is Professor of Law and Philosophy of Law in the Faculty of Law at Oxford and Lee Shau Kee's Sir Man Kam Lo Fellow in Law at Wadham College. He held visiting appointments at the University of Hong Kong, the National University of Singapore, the University of Münster, and New York University. He has written about torts, private law theory, and general jurisprudence. His work has been cited by the UK Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of Canada, and the High Court of Australia.