Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Table of cases
- Table of statutes and treaties
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Preventing unjust enrichment
- 3 Mistakes
- 4 Other-regarding conferrals of benefits
- 5 Self-interested conferrals of benefits
- 6 Restitution in contexts of informal intimacy
- 7 Wrongful enrichments
- 8 Restitution in a contractual context
- 9 Restitution in bankruptcy
- 10 Reasons for restitution
- Bibliography
- Index
10 - Reasons for restitution
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Table of cases
- Table of statutes and treaties
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Preventing unjust enrichment
- 3 Mistakes
- 4 Other-regarding conferrals of benefits
- 5 Self-interested conferrals of benefits
- 6 Restitution in contexts of informal intimacy
- 7 Wrongful enrichments
- 8 Restitution in a contractual context
- 9 Restitution in bankruptcy
- 10 Reasons for restitution
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
While restitution receded from the American academic landscape and was marginalized in the law school curriculum, courts continued to develop the doctrine, facing new problems and refining the rules dealing with benefit-based civil liability. In fact, some of the most high-profile cases of recent years (and the years to come) are cases of restitution: multi-million dollar mistaken wire transfers, subrogation claims of various governmental bodies against an increasing number of injurious industries, and the unjust enrichment claims of slave laborers (or their descendants) against corporate defendants that captured ill-gotten gains from their enslavements are only a few of the most salient examples.
The law of restitution should be revived in the American legal academia not because it will otherwise disappear. Benefit-based claims are not likely to go away as long as they play a role in real-life problems such as the allocation of risks and responsibilities for mistakes, the solution of systematic collective action problems, the facilitation of relationships of informal intimacy and of good samaritan behavior, and the vindication of people's (various types of) rights against potential infringers. Sophisticated lawyers are likely to keep on pressing restitutionary claims in these as well as other cases, such as contract disputes and insolvencies, in an attempt to serve their clients’ best interests.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Law and Ethics of Restitution , pp. 328 - 331Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004