Unjust Enrichment, 2nd Edition

• Written by the world's leading scholar on restitution of unjust enrichment and the editor of the Clarendon Law Series, this text provides an excellent introduction for those studying unjust enrichment
• Fully updated to include new case law and academic work particularly in the Enrichment at the Expense of the Claimant and Unjust and Defences sections.
• Relates unjust enrichment to other more familiar categories, such as property and obligations to help readers to make links between the two
• Provides the reader with a commanding overview of private law

New to this edition

• All six parts of the book: Introduction; Enrichment at the Expense of the Claimant; Unjust; The Right Restitution; Defences; and Competing Terminology will be fully updated.
• New cases have been published which are central to the arguments surrounding the circumstances in which enrichment might be regarded as relatively unjust so as to give the claimant a right to restitution.
• New academic work has been published in the issues discussed in the book, which follows on from a symposium convened by Professor Andrew Burrows in January 2004 at St Hugh's College, Oxford
• In Part II the arguments surrounding the view that the gain-based recovery of a claimant in unjust enrichment must be capped by the amount of his own loss, have been refined

This new edition of

by the editor of the Clarendon Law Series, is a fully updated, clear and concise account of the law of unjust enrichment. It attempts to move away from the use of obscure terminology inherited from the past.

This text is the first book to insist on the switch from restitution to unjust enrichment, from response to event. It organises modern law around five simple questions: Was the defendant enriched? If so, was it at the claimant's expense? If so, was it unjust? The fourth question is then what kind of right the claimant has, and the fifth is whether the defendant has any defences.

This second edition was revised and updated by Peter Birks before his death from cancer on 6 July 2004 at the age of 62. It represents the final thinking of the world's leading authority on the subject.

Readership: Undergraduate and postgraduate law students taking an option in Restitution.