New Private Law Theory is pluralist, comparative, application-oriented, transnational and reflects critical approaches.

New Private Law Theory opens a new pathway to private law theory through a pluralistic approach. Such a theory needs a broad and stable foundation, which the authors have built here through a canon of nearly seventy texts of reference. This book brings these different texts from different disciplines into conversation with each other, grouping them around central questions of private law and at the same time integrating them with the legal doctrinal analysis of example cases. This book will be accessible to both experienced and early career scholars working on private law.

This comprehensive Research Handbook provides an unparalleled overview of contemporary private law theory. Featuring original contributions by leading experts in the field, its extensive examinations of the core areas of contracts, property and torts are complemented by an exploration of a breadth of topics that cross the divide between private and public law, including labor law and corporate law.

"This book discusses developments in scholarship dedicated to reinvigorating the study of the broad domain of private law. This field, which embraces the traditional common law subjects-property, contracts, and torts-as well as adjacent, more statutory areas, such as intellectual property and commercial law, also includes important subjects that have been neglected in the United States but are beginning to make a comeback. The book particularly focuses on the New Private Law, an approach that aims to bring a new outlook to the study of private law by moving beyond reductively instrumentalist policy evaluation and narrow, rule-by-rule, doctrine-by-doctrine analysis, so as to consider and capture how private law's various features fit and work together, as well as the normative underpinnings of these larger structures. This movement is resuscitating the notion of private law itself in United States and has brought an interdisciplinary perspective to the more traditional, doctrinal approach prevalent in Commonwealth countries. The book embraces a broad range of perspectives to private law-including philosophical, economic, historical, and psychological- yet it offers a unifying theme of seriousness about the structure and content of private law."--

This book demonstrates how legal realism offers important and unique jurisprudential insights that are not just a part of legal history, but are also relevant and useful for a contemporary understanding of legal theory.

This volume brings together essays by scholars from around the world covering issues in general private law theory as well as specific fields including the theoretical analysis of tort law, property law, and contract law.

The Humanity of Private Law presents a new way of thinking about English private law. Making a decisive break from earlier views of private law, which saw private law as concerned with wealth-maximisation or preserving relationships of mutual independence between its subjects, the author argues that English private law's core concern is the flourishing of its subjects. THIS VOLUME - presents a critique of alternative explanations of private law; - defines and sets out the key building blocks of private law; - sets out the vision of human flourishing (the RP) that English private law has in mind in seeking to promote its subjects' flourishing; - shows how various features of English private law are fine-tuned to ensure that its subjects enjoy a flourishing existence, according to the vision of human flourishing provided by the RP; - explains how other features of English private law are designed to preserve private law's legitimacy while it pursues its core concern of promoting human flourishing; - defends the view of English private law presented here against arguments that it does not adequately fit the rules and doctrines of private law, or that it is implausible to think that English private law is concerned with promoting human flourishing. A follow-up volume will question whether the RP is correct as an account of what human flourishing involves, and consider what private law would look like if it sought to give effect to a more authentic vision of human flourishing. The Humanity of Private Law is essential reading for students, academics and judges who are interested in understanding private law in common law jurisdictions, and for anyone interested in the nature and significance of human flourishing.

Methodology in Private Law Theory: Between New Private Law and Rechtsdogmatik represents a first-of-its-kind dialogue between leading lights in German and American private law theory. The chapters in this volume build upon established traditions of scholarship in German private law and harness resurgent scholarly interest in private law in the United States, inviting readers to question how private law functions on both sides of the Atlantic. In the context of the cross-fertilization of legal scholarship, the transnationalization of law, and the historical ties between US and German debates on methodology, the volume encourages reasoned engagement with private law doctrines and institutions. It further invites reflexive consideration of diverse ways in which methods of legal analysis influence social practices where law is given, received, asserted, and negotiated. Leading methodologies of the past and present are subject to fresh elucidation and insightful criticism, including those of legal formalism, legal conceptualism, legal realism, law and economics, legal philosophy, legal history, empirical jurisprudence, Rechtsdogmatik, and other varieties of doctrinal scholarship. Providing the necessary background for understanding different legal cultures and traditions in private law, Methodology in Private Law Theory is a must-read for anyone working within the field.

This volume examines the relationship between Christian legal theory and the fields of private law. Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in private law theory, and this book contributes to that discussion by drawing on the historical, theological, and philosophical resources of the Christian tradition. The book begins with an introduction from the editors that lays out the understanding of "private law" and what distinguishes private law topics from other fields of law. This section includes two survey chapters on natural law and biblical sources. The remaining sections of the book move sequentially through the fields of property, contracts, and torts. Several chapters focus on historical sources and show the ways in which the evolution of legal doctrine in areas of private law has been heavily influenced by Christian thinkers. Other chapters draw out more contemporary and public policy-related implications for private law. While this book is focused on the relationship of Christianity to private law, it will be of broad interest to those who might not share that faith perspective. In particular, legal historians and philosophers of law will find much of interest in the original scholarship in this volume. The book will be attractive to teachers of law, political science, and theology. It will be of special interest to the many law faculty in property, contracts, and torts, as it provides a set of often overlooked historical and theoretical perspectives on these fields.

Offers an algorithmic solution to the problem of legal fictions: enter a fiction and find the answer.