This book provides a comprehensive theory of the rights upon which tort law is based and the liability that flows from violating those rights. Inspired by the account of private law contained in Immanuel Kant's Metaphysics of Morals, the book shows that Kant's theory elucidates a conception of interpersonal wrongdoing that illuminates the operation of tort law. The book then utilises this conception, applying it to the various areas of tort law, in order to develop an understandin...

Unlike other areas of the private law, the law of unjust enrichment stands or falls with the theory upon which it is based. This theory, fashioned primarily by Peter Birks and continued by many other scholars is known as the 'dominant model'. The model employs a number of crucial concepts such as enrichment, benefit, value, and injustice. Unfortunately, the model has no coherent understanding of these things. Instead, it equivocates over the meanings of these concepts and ...

It is said that a nuisance is an interference with the use and enjoyment of land. This definition is typically unhelpful. While a nuisance must fit this account, it is plain that not all such interferences are legal nuisances. Thus, analysis of this area of the law begins with a definition far too broad for its subject matter, forcing the analyst to find more or less arbitrary ways of cutting back on potential liability. Tort law is plagued by this kind of approach.In the law of nu...

Throughout much of the history of political philosophy, many of the great philosophers begin their work with an investigation of private law. Why is this? And why is the central focus of our modern concern, the state, examined so late in their works? This book suggests an answer to these and related questions. It reveals that there are two general ways of thinking about the legal and the political: the modern which sees all through the lens of the state, and the traditional which begins wi...

This book continues and revises the ideas of justice as fairness that John Rawls presented in A Theory of Justice but changes its philosophical interpretation in a fundamental way. That previous work assumed what Rawls calls a "well-ordered society," one that is stable and relatively homogenous in its basic moral beliefs and in which there is broad agreement about what constitutes the good life. Yet in modern democratic society a plurality of incompatible and irreconcilable doctri...

A Short History of Ethics has over the past thirty years become a key philosophical contribution to studies on morality and ethics. Alasdair MacIntyre writes a new preface for this second edition which looks at the book 'thirty years on' and considers its impact. A Short History of Ethics guides the reader through the history of moral philosophy from the Greeks to contemporary times. MacIntyre emphasises the importance of a historical context to moral concepts and ideas s...

Most young people considering studying law, or pursuing a legal career, have very little idea of what learning law involves and how universities teach law to their students. The new edition of this book, which proved very popular when first published in 2007, provides a 'taster' for the study of law; a short, accessible presentation of law as an academic subject, designed to help 17- and 18-year old students and others decide whether law is the right choice for them as a university subject...

The third edition of Jurisprudence offers a logically structured, comprehensive, well-researched and accessible overview of legal theory and philosophy. Written primarily for undergraduate students, it examines and demystifies the discipline's major ideas, and promotes a richer understanding of the social, moral and economic dimensions of the law. By locating the major traditions of jurisprudence within the history of ideas, the author deepens students' understanding of the perennial debat...

Written in 1833-4, when Marx was barely twenty-five, this astonishingly rich body of works formed the cornerstone for his later political philosophy. In the Critique of Hegel's Doctrine of the State, he dissects Hegel's thought and develops his own views on civil society, while his Letters reveal a furious intellect struggling to develop the egalitarian theory of state. Equally challenging are his controversial essay On the Jewish Question and the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, wh...

In this sequel to his prize-winning book, The Eyes of the People, Jeffrey Edward Green draws on philosophy, history, social science, and literature to ask what democracy can mean in a world where it is understood that socioeconomic status to some degree will always determine opportunities for civic engagement and career advancement. Under this shadow of unfairness, Green argues that the most advantaged class are rightly subjected to compulsory public burdens. And just as provocati...

From a Nobel Laureate economist, "after more than half a century, Rules and Order remains an essential book for anybody interested in politics or law" ( EconLib).F. A. Hayek made many valuable contributions to the field of economics as well as to the disciplines of philosophy and politics. This volume represents the first section of Hayek's comprehensive three-part study of the relations between law and liberty. Rules and Order constructs ...

2013 was the 50th anniversary of the House of Lords' landmark decision in Hedley Byrne v Heller. This international collection of essays brings together leading experts from five of the most important jurisdictions in which the case has been received (the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand, Canada and Australia) to reappraise its implications from a number of complementary perspectives-historical, theoretical, conceptual, doctrinal and comparative. It explores modern d...