Private Law Theory

The theory of private law – the area governing interactions between individuals, such as contracts and torts – is still partially dominated by a ‘corrective justice’ approach focusing merely on the past interaction between the litigants and denying the relevance of broader considerations and effects on society. In this talk, I defend an alternative view according to which private law (and law generally) is one social tool to achieve different forms of justice. While not denying the importance of corrective justice to private law, such an account stresses the importance of distributive justice, and in particular of equality and fairness, and the ways in which distributive justice informs the scope of obligations recognised by corrective justice. This approach will be demonstrated by focusing on several examples … (more)

[Keele University, April 2014]

First posted 2014-04-15 05:59:40