The aim of this book is to provide a high-quality overview of the rules and principles that constitute English private law. Along with its companion volume, English Public Law , it presents a unique picture of English law that it is hoped will be of great benefit to practitioners, academics, and students alike. Moreover, with the increasing emphasis on globalization in legal services, it is anticipated that foreign lawyers will find these two volumes of invaluable help in understanding English law, which may otherwise appear to be unstructured and lacking in principle.

To produce a succinct and yet authoritative overview requires mastery of the field in question and it is with that in mind that the team of contributors has been assembled. The authors are acknowledged experts in their respective subject areas and their brief has been to produce as clear, simple and accurate an overview as possible of the relevant rules and principles. What one has here, therefore, is the product of many years of learning in each particular area.

All this was the brainchild of the late Professor Peter Birks, to whom this book is dedicated. Inspired by the example of Gloag and Hendersons Law of Scotland , and with the particular encouragement of the late Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, Birkss goal was for this and English Public Law to be on every English lawyers desk as at least a first point of reference. His mark is indelibly stamped across the whole work not least in the structure which he devised for this book.

It is worth recalling here that, while seeing the enterprise as following in the tradition of Gaius Institutes and Blackstones Commentaries , Birks regarded the need for a well-organized overview, or map, of English private law as responding to two particular challenges in the modern practice of law. He referred to these as stovepipe mentality and information overload. In his words:

There is a constant complaint of stovepipe mentality. It is an allegation that practitionersespecially young practitioners, since the complaint is usually made by senior peopleknow their law only in the way that many people know London, as pools of unconnected light into which to emerge from a limited number of friendly tube stationsThe reason why these stovepipe lawyers cannot move confidently from one area of the law to another is that nobody has shown them the map.