FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION

Assignments occur in a wide variety of contexts. Many are of everyday commercial importance, others more exotic. But the subject is marked by ancient terminology (choses or things in action) and by distant history (the common laws reluctance to treat contractual relations as other than personal and the perceived risks arising from the buying and selling of causes of action). The interventions of equity and of various statutory provisions leave a patchwork picture, the implications of which are not always easy to comprehend or apply.

The topic also raises questions which are inherently difficult. Even more so, one may add, when associated with issues of private international lawin 2008 the Council of Ministers had to defer determination of which law or laws should govern the effectiveness of an assignment or subrogation of a claim against third parties and the priority of the assigned or subrogated claim over a right of another person when agreeing Rome I Regulation 593/2008: see article 27(2); no via media could be found to reconcile the competing arguments of block discounters in favour of the law governing the assignment and others favouring the law governing the claim assigned.

The first edition of the present work was by Marcus Smith QC alone. Its success in providing a wide-ranging review of the subject made it of value to the practitioner and academic alike. The second edition, in which Marcus Smith is joined by Nico Leslie, takes an even broader view of the field. It incorporates various new sections, including a substantial one covering the following and tracing of assets in circumstances where an owner is deprived of his property. But throughout it maintains the same high standard of clarity and analysis, starting as before with a useful overview of its now expanded contents and clarification of the terminologychoses in action, property rights and intangible property, etc. The authors jurisprudential interests manifest themselves in passages discussing the various interests involved in assignment in Hohfeldian terms. Comparative European law appropriately informs their analysis of the circumstances in which transfer of property occurs so as to preclude the following or tracing of assets.

The new edition is not only comprehensive, but clear, informative, well-referenced, scholarly and appropriately critical. It is also a good read, both for detailed study and for reference. It is a pleasure to commend the joint authors on producing so admirable a sequel to an already excellent first edition.

Lord Mance

January 2013