Worthington - Revolution and Evolution in Private Law

REVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION IN PRIVATE LAW

The development of private law across the common law world is typically portrayed as a series of incremental steps, each one delivered as a result of judges dealing with marginally different factual circumstances presented to them for determination. This is said to be the common law method. According to this process, change might be assumed to be gradual, almost imperceptible. If this were true, however, then even Darwinian-style evolutionwhich is subject to major change-inducing pressures, such as the death of the dinosaurswould seem unlikely in the law, and radical and revolutionary paradigms shifts perhaps impossible. And yet the history of the common law is to the contrary. The legal landscape is littered with quite remarkable revolutionary and evolutionary changes in the shape of the common law.

The essays in this volume explore some of the highlights in this fascinating revolutionary and evolutionary development of private law. The contributors expose the nature of the changes undergone and their significance for the future direction of travel. They identify the circumstances and the contexts which might have provided an impetus for these significant changes.

The essays range across all areas of private law, including contract, tort, unjust enrichment and property. No area has been immune from development. That fact itself is unsurprising, but an extended examination of the particular circumstances and contexts which delivered some of private laws most important developments has its own special significance for what it might indicate about the shape, and the shaping, of private law regimes in the future.

Revolution and Evolution
in Private Law

Edited by

Sarah Worthington
Andrew Robertson
Graham Virgo

OXFORD AND PORTLAND, OREGON
2018

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First published 2018

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN:HB:978-1-50991-324-4

ePDF:978-1-50991-326-8

ePub:978-1-50991-325-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Worthington, Sarah, editor. | Robertson, Andrew, 1966-, editor. | Virgo, Graham, editor.

Title: Revolution and evolution in private law / Edited by Sarah Worthington, Andrew Robertson, Graham Virgo.

Description: Portland, Oregon : Hart Publishing, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017042043 (print) | LCCN 2017042424 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509913251 (Epub) |
ISBN 9781509913244 (hardback : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Civil law. | Common law. | Comparative law. |
Civil lawGreat Britain. | Civil lawAustralia.

Classification: LCC K623 (ebook) | LCC K623 .R48 2018 (print) | DDC 346.41dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017042043

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This volume contains a selection of essays originally presented at the Eighth Biennial Conference on the Law of Obligations, which was co-hosted by Melbourne Law School and the Cambridge Private Law Centre and held at Downing College Cambridge in July 2016. We are very grateful to Hart Publishing, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Herbert Smith Freehills and Travers Smith for their sponsorship of the conference, Imogen Dodds, Emily Gordon, Robert OSullivan, Rajiv Shah and Elizabeth Virgo for their assistance as student volunteers, and Daniel Bates for his very capable IT support. Thanks are also due to all of the presenters, chairs and participants in the Obligations VIII conference for their contributions to the discussion of the theme of this collection and the individual chapters. Finally, we would like to thank Caitlin ONeil for her editorial assistance.

Sarah Worthington, Andrew Robertson and Graham Virgo

May 2017