The Goals of Private Law

Description

This collection contributes to a fundamentally important set of debates about the nature of private law. The essays consider whether private law should be seen as having goals and, if so, whether those goals are particular to private as opposed to public law. They consider the legitimacy of the pursuit of community welfare goals in private law and the place of instrumentalist thinking in private law scholarship. They explore the relationship between the pursuit of policy goals and the other influences that shape private law, such as the formal values of certainty, consistency and coherence and the need to do justice to the parties to particular disputes. The collection analyses the role that particular policy goals do and should play in particular private law doctrines, and contributes to debate about the relationship between community welfare goals and considerations of interpersonal morality arising from the interactions between individuals. The contributors are drawn from across the common law world and offer a diverse range of perspectives on the controversies under consideration.

Andrew Robertson is a Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne. Tang Hang Wu is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore.

The Goals of Private Law is a book that contains much fodder for thought. It contains views as diverse and pluralistic as its title implies and is a collection of articles that will be appreciated by anyone seeking to understand the nature of law and what the law as an institution can, and should, seek to achieve. -- Karin Lai Yiling * The Singapore Journal of Legal Studies * The chapters in Robertson and Tang's collection are well worth reading for the private lawyer would be a valuable addition to all tort lawyers' bookshelves. -- Professor Prue Vines * Torts Law Journal, Volume 19 *