Dimensions of Private Law

Anglo-American private law has been a far more complex phenomenon than has been usually recognized. Attempts to reduce it to a single explanatory principle, or to a precisely classified or categorized map, scheme, or diagram, are liable to distort the past by omitting or marginalizing material inconsistent with proposed principles or schemes. This study will be of importance to all who are interested in property, tort, contract, unjust enrichment, legal reasoning, legal method, the history of the common law, and the relation between legal theory and legal history.

• Agues that law is not better understood by concealing its inherent complexity
• A single-minded search for order and precision in law may, if pressed too far, be self-defeating and may distort an understanding of the past
• The reasons for legal decisions are often not alternative, but concurrent, cumulative, and complementary