The Oxford Handbook of the New Private Law

by Gold, Andrew S.; Goldberg, John C.P.; Kelly, Daniel B.; Sherwin, Emily; Smith, Henry E.

• ISBN13: 9780190919665
• ISBN10: 0190919663
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2020-11-06
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The Oxford Handbook of the New Private Law reflects exciting developments in scholarship dedicated to reinvigorating the study of the broad field of private law. This field embraces the traditional common law subjects (property, contracts, and torts), as well as adjacent, more statutory areas, such as intellectual property and commercial law. It also includes important areas that have been neglected in the United States but are beginning to make a comeback. These include unjust enrichment, restitution, equity, and remedies more generally. "Private law" can also mean private law as a whole, which invites consideration of issues such as the public-private distinction, the similarities and differences between the various areas of private law, and the institutional framework supporting private law - including courts, arbitrators, and even custom.

The New Private Law is an approach to these subjects that aims to bring a new outlook to the study of private law by moving beyond reductively instrumentalist policy evaluation and narrow, rule-by-rule, doctrine-by-doctrine analysis, so as to consider and capture how private law's various features fit and work together, as well as the normative underpinnings of these larger structures. This movement has begun resuscitating the notion of private law itself in the United States and has brought an interdisciplinary perspective to the more traditional, doctrinal approach prevalent in Commonwealth countries. The Handbook embraces a broad range of perspectives to private law - including philosophical, economic, historical, and psychological, to name a few - yet it offers a unifying theme of seriousness about the structure and content of private law. It will be an essential resource for legal scholars interested in the future of this important field.

Author Biography

Andrew S. Gold is professor of law at Brooklyn Law School and is associate director of the Center for the Study of Business Law and Regulation. Professor Gold's primary research interests address private law theory, fiduciary law, and the law of corporations. He is a co-editor of multiple books on fiduciary theory, including Fiduciary Government (Cambridge University Press, 2018) ; Contract, Status, and Fiduciary Law (Oxford University Press, 2017); and Philosophical Foundations of Fiduciary Law (Oxford University Press 2014). He is also currently writing a monograph, "The Right of Redress," to be published with Oxford University Press. Professor Gold previously was the Bruce W. Nichols Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School; an HLA Hart Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford; and a Fulbright Visiting Research Chair at McGill University.
John C.P. Goldberg is Deputy Dean and Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence at Harvard Law School. An expert in tort law, tort theory, and political philosophy, he previously taught at Vanderbilt Law School, where he served as Associate Dean for Research (2006-08). He is co-author of Recognizing Wrongs (Harvard University Press, 2020) (with Benjamin Zipursky), as well as Tort Law: Responsibilities and Redress (4th ed. 2016) (with Anthony Sebok and Benjamin Zipursky), and The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Torts (2010) (with Zipursky). He has also published dozens of articles and essays in scholarly journals. Goldberg has taught an array of first-year and upper-level courses, and has received multiple teaching prizes. An Associate Reporter for the American Law Institute's Fourth Restatement of Property, he serves as an advisor to the Third Restatement of Torts, and is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Tort Law and Legal Theory. In 2009, he was Chair of the Torts and Compensation Systems Section of the Association of American Law Schools.

Daniel B. Kelly is Professor of Law, Director of the Program in Law and Economics, and Director of the Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate at the University of Notre Dame. He has been a Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School and Harvard Law School. His primary research and teaching areas include property and trusts and estates.

Emily Sherwin is Frank B. Ingersol Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. She has taught at the University of Kentucky Law School and University of San Diego Law School, and has visited at the Boston University School of Law and University of Pennsylvania Law School. She writes on various aspects of legal theory and remedies.

Henry E. Smith is Fessenden Professor of Law and the Director of the Project on the Foundations of Private Law at Harvard Law School. Previously, he taught at the Northwestern University School of Law and was the Fred A. Johnston Professor of Property and Environmental Law at Yale Law School. He has written extensively on property, equity, remedies, and private law theory. In 2014, the American Law Institute named him Reporter for the Restatement (Fourth) of Property. With Professor Thomas Merrill of Columbia Law
School, he is the co-author of The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Property (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) and Property: Principles and Policies (Foundation Press, 2nd
ed., 2012). He is co-editor of The Research Handbook on the Economics of Property Law (with Kenneth Ayotte, Elgar, 2011), Philosophical Foundations of Property Law (with James
Penner, OUP 2013), and Perspectives on Property Law (with Robert C. Ellickson and Carol M. Rose, Aspen 2014).