Unlike other areas of the private law, the law of unjust enrichment stands or falls with the theory upon which it is based. This theory, fashioned primarily by Peter Birks and continued by many other scholars is known as the ‘dominant model’. The model employs a number of crucial concepts such as enrichment, benefit, value, and injustice. Unfortunately, the model has no coherent understanding of these things. Instead, it equivocates over the meanings of these concepts and at times adopts strange and even absurd understandings of them. It has to do this, because the model does not work. The dominant model is a failure. After revealing this, the book goes on to demonstrate how a more constrained and humble law of unjust enrichment might emerge from the wreckage of the dominant model. As scholarly doubts around the dominant model increase, this thought-provoking revision of unjust enrichment is both welcome and needed.
Allan Beever is Professor of Law at Auckland University of Technology.
1: IntroductionPart One: What is Enrichment2: The Enrichment Mystery3: The Law’s Test for Enrichment4: Enrichment and Objectivity5: Enrichment and Economics6: The Law’s Objective Test and (Subjective) Value 7: Relational ValuePart Two: Is the Law of Unjust Enrichment About Enrichment?8: Enrichments that are not ‘Enrichments’9: ‘Enrichments’ that are not Enrichments10: Subjective Devaluation and Freedom of Choice11: Concluding Remarks on EnrichmentPart Three: What is the Injustice in an Unjust Enrichment?12: Unjust Enrichment as a Moral Principle13: The Adequacy of the Principle against Unjust Enrichment14: The Injustice I: Intention15: Effective but Defective Transfer 16: The Injustice II: Miscellaneous ConsiderationsPart Four: What is the Scope of Unjust Enrichment? 17: No Transfer I: Title18: No Transfer II: Trusts19: No Transfer III: Services20: The Wrong Defect: Transfers under Contract21: Miscellaneous Issues22: Conclusion