This title seeks to analyse the law of restitution, that body of law concerned with the award of remedies assessed by reference to a gain made by a defendant rather than a loss suffered by the claimant. It focuses on those claims founded on unjust enrichment, and the award of restitutionary remedies.

"The law of restitution is a major branch of private law which is not well understood. This is the first book dedicated to the law of restitution in Snigapore providing an analysis of the principles of the law of restitution with reference to two distinct parts, namely, unjust enrichment and restitution for wrongs. The prevention of unjust enrichment as an independent legal principle, capable of founding causes of action, gained currency as an independent branch of the common law in Singapore only in the 1990s. This book introduces readers to the central concepts and controversies in the law of restitution, focusing on unjust enrichment and restitution for wrongs as organising themes. Leading decisions in Singapore and other Commonwealth jurisdictions are used to explain the fundamental concepts in the law of restitution" -- Back cover.

Restitution is the body of law concerned with taking away gains that someone has wrongfully obtained. The operator of a Ponzi scheme takes money from his victims by fraud and then invests it in stocks that rise in value. Or a company pays a shareholder excessive dividends or pays them to the wrong person. Or a man poisons his grandfather and then collects under the grandfather’s will. In each of these cases, one party is unjustly enriched at the expense of another. And in all of them the law of restitution provides a way to undo the enrichment and transfer the defendant’s gains to a party with better rights to them. Tort law focuses on the harm, or costs, that one party wrongfully imposes on another. Restitution is the mirror image; it corrects gains that one party wrongfully receives at another’s expense. It is an important topic for every lawyer and for anyone else interested in how the legal system responds to injustice. In Restitution, Ward Farnsworth presents a guide to this body of law that is compact, lively, and insightful—the first treatment of its kind that the American law of restitution has received. The book explains restitution doctrines, remedies, and defenses with unprecedented clarity and illustrates them with vivid examples. Farnsworth demonstrates that the law of restitution is guided by a manageable and coherent set of principles that have remarkable versatility and power. Restitution makes a complex and important area of law accessible, understandable, and interesting to any reader.

This new edition of a landmark study of the law of restitution has been substantially revised and updated. Concentrating on structural principles rather than detailed rules, the book is an invaluable guide to this difficult area of law.

Over the past decade, the High Court has repeatedly rejected the notion that there is a unifying principle of unjust enrichment at the plaintiff's expense, in contrast to the position in the UK. This book provides a vigorous and sustained justification for the Australian position, and demonstrates that the law in the UK has generated more fictions than it was ever thought to abolish. The law of restitution is shown to comprise several fundamentally distinct legal concepts which fill gaps in the law of contract and tort, and which have nothing in common beyond the historical accident that they arose out of the action of indebitatus assumpsit. These are (i) the recovery of non-voluntary payments (by mistake, duress, undue influence, unconscionable dealing and total failure of consideration); (ii) remuneration for goods or services requested by the defendant in circumstances indicating a promise to pay for them; and (iii) the protection of certain facilitative institutions of private law (such as private property and fiduciary relationships). The book staunchly defends the traditional common law approach of analysing legal principles by the empirical method of treating like cases alike, rather than by derivation from supposedly unifying theories. This edition updates the first edition, which was published in 1998, in the light of almost 20 years of case-law and academic debate. It also adds a separate chapter dealing with the history of the law of restitution and why it matters.

The third edition of The Principles of the Law of Restitution brings this widely cited and influential volume fully up to date. It has been substantially rewritten to reflect the significant changes in the law of restitution and the expansion in the theoretical and critical commentary on the subject. Following important decisions of the Supreme Court and other courts, large-scale changes have been made to the chapters on enrichment, at the expense of the claimant, mistake, claims against public authorities, and change of position. Additionally, this edition contains a new chapter on the operation of juridical bars on restitutionary claims. References to developments in other jurisdictions have been expanded for this edition, reflecting the significance of these changes and how they assist in the interpretation of English law and provide a basis for criticising that law. Further, in the light of leading cases and the contributions of restitutionary scholars around the world, the author's views on specific controversial debates about the ambit, function, and interpretation of the subject have changed, sometimes radically. One significant aspect of the book remains unchanged: the book continues to focus on the identification and analysis of the principles which underpin the law of restitution as a whole, but with reference to its three distinct parts: unjust enrichment, restitution for wrongs, and the vindication of property rights. This approach provides the reader with a peerless guide to the law of restitution.

This book examines the history, principles, and practice of awarding compensation and restitution in investor-State arbitration disputes, which are initiated under investment treaties. The principles discussed may be applied to all international law cases where damage to property is an issue. The book starts by tracing the roots of the applicable international legal principles to Roman law, and from there follows their evolution through the European law of extra-contractual liability and eventually through the Chorzów Factory case to principles of compensation and restitution in the modern law of international investment. The greater part of the book is then dedicated to examination of the modern application of these principles, focusing on the jurisprudence of international tribunals under various arbitral rules such as ICSID and UNCITRAL Rules. Monetary compensation as the prevalent form of remedy sought and awarded in investor-State disputes is discussed in more detail, including topics such as the amount of compensation for damage resulting from breach of investment treaties or for lawful expropriation of foreign investor's property, a brief overview of valuation methods, supplementary compensation for moral damages, interest, costs, and currency fluctuations as well as various principles that may limit the amount of recoverable compensation, such as causation. A full chapter is dedicated to the discussion of the theory and practice of awarding restitution in investor-State disputes. The book also covers the general principle of reparation in international law as applied in investor-State arbitrations. The topics discussed cover all the theoretical as well as practical issues which may be raised in awarding compensation and restitution in investment treaty disputes between States and foreign investors.

'The Principles of Equity and Trusts' brings an engaging contextual approach to the subject. Graham Virgo overcomes the complex issues in the study of trusts and equity with unparalleled clarity, offering a rigorous and insightful commentary on the law and its contemporary contexts.