ABSTRACT
Choosing what to believe, and exercising the right to hold that belief, are of as much concern today as they were when Miss Allcard entered the sisterhood of which Miss Skinner was the lady superior. In addition to the resurgence of traditional organised religion there is a proliferation of personal development courses or so called large group awareness training courses (referred to in this chapter as a ‘LGAT’). These appear to offer in an apparently secular setting some kind of spiritual experience. They involve a search for meaning, an identification of values and some kind of prescription which if followed promises a better life. One such course, The Turning Point, came into broader view after a participant Rebekah Lawrence committed suicide after taking part in that course.
This chapter uses the case of Rebekah Lawrence as a starting point for analysis. It deals with three questions. First, it argues that LGAT cases, if they are not already, ought to be caught by the spiritual advisor category of presumed undue influence. Second, the analysis offers some insights into the normative accounts of undue influence. Scholars disagree as to whether undue influence is best seen as some type of (equitable) wrongdoing or an example of unjust enrichment, or perhaps both. This chapter concludes that a dual analysis must be possible, but offers a more nuanced way of understanding the wrong. Finally, to the extent that undue influence is properly to be regarded as part of the law of unjust enrichment, the chapter offers some tentative conclusions as to the normative basis of that category. On the assumption that Professor Weinrib’s corrective justice account of unjust enrichment is correct, or is at least a working hypothesis, it is argued that undue influence, or at least this species of undue influence (spiritual advisor category) cannot be understood sensibly within a Kantian framework.
Degeling, Simone, Undue Influence and the Spiritual Economy (January 2017) in K Barker et al (eds), Private Law and Power (Oxford, Hart Publishing, 2017), 159-175.
First posted 2020-02-26 08:29:10
Leave a Reply