Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 14:45:10 -0400

From: Jason Neyers

Subject: Interesting New Book on Private Law

Dear Colleagues:

Many of you (especially the comparativists) will be interested in James Gordley's new book Foundations of Private Law: Property, Tort, Contract, Unjust Enrichment, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). I have thumbed through it and it looks very interesting. From the description:

• Comprehensive treatment of all the basic fields of private law: property, tort, contract and unjust enrichment allowing these fields to be seen as parts of a unified subject
• Shows how the history of the common law and civil law are related and how modern law depends on developments in the past
• Brings insights from a background in philosophy to the analysis

Foundations of Private Law is a treatise on the Western law of property, contract, tort and unjust enrichment in both common law systems and civil law systems. The thesis of the book is that underlying these fields of law are common principles, and that these principles can be used to explain the history and development of these areas. These underlying common principles are matters of common sense, which were given their archetypal expression by older jurists who wrote in the Aristotelian tradition. These principles shaped the development of Western law but can resolve legal problems which these older writers did not confront.

--
Jason Neyers
January Term Director
Associate Professor of Law
Faculty of Law
University of Western Ontario
N6A 3K7
(519) 661-2111 x. 88435

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