Reasons? For Restitution?

Journal article

The law of unjust enrichment is a subject of intense doctrinal debate. While it has received increasing theoretical attention, deep disagreement remains about its conceptual and normative roots. Charlie Webb’s Reason and Restitution,1 the product of many years’ work, provides a feature-length theoretical discussion of mistaken payments, generally taken to be a central case of unjust enrichment. We should take it seriously. I found the book’s arguments engaging and thoughtprovoking, even when I disagreed with its conclusions; I would recommend it to anyone interested in private law theory or the law of unjust enrichment. Unlike so many of today’s monographs, it is difficult to pin the book down to one big idea. Each chapter makes interesting claims about theory or law. The central themes of the book are its methodology and its account of the interests at stake in mistaken payments cases. Webb’s principal aim is to understand what reasons justify restitution of mistaken payments; only then, he claims, can we ask what other claims belong in this group, or whether those claims belong under the banner of ‘unjust enrichment.’ I will first examine some general issues in private law theory’s methodology, explaining whyWebb sees things as he does - as will become clear, that is the ‘reasons’ half of my title. In the second half of the article, I turn to Webb’s substantive claims about mistaken payments; that is the ‘restitution’ half of my title.

Authors: Wilmot-Smith, F

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Wiley
• Journal: Modern Law Review
• Volume: 79
• Issue: 6
• Pages: 1116-1136
• Publication date: 2016-11-21
• Acceptance date: 2016-08-13
• DOI: 10.1111/1468-2230.12234
• EISSN: 1468-2230
• ISSN: 0026-7961 and 1468-2230
• Keywords: Article