Ernest J. Weinrib - Böcker

Reciprocal Freedom elucidates the relationship between private law and the state, presenting reciprocal freedom as the normative idea underlying a legal order in which private law occupies a distinctive place. Weinrib develops a set of interconnected conceptions of private law, corrective justice, rights, ownership, the role of legal institutions, distributive justice, the relationship of constitutional rights to private law, and the rule of law. The book is explicitly Kantian in inspiration; it presents a non-instrumental account of law that is geared to the juridical character of the modern liberal state. Combining legal and philosophical analysis, it offers a sequenced and legally informed argument for understanding law as necessary to our co-existence as free beings.

Private law governs our most pervasive relationships with other people: the wrongs we do to one another, the property we own and exclude from others' use, the contracts we make and break, and the benefits realized at another's expense that we cannot justly retain. The major rules of private law are well known, but how they are organized, explained, and justified is a matter of fierce debate by lawyers, economists, and philosophers.Ernest Weinrib made a seminal contribution to the understanding of private law with his first book, The Idea of Private Law. In it, he argued that there is a special morality intrinsic to private law: the morality of corrective justice. By understanding the nature of corrective justice we understand the purpose of private law - which is simply to be private law.In this new book Weinrib takes up and develops his account of corrective justice, its nature, and its role in understanding the law. He begins by setting out the conceptual components of corrective justice, drawing a model of a moral relationship between two equals and the rights and duties that exist between them. He then explains the significance of corrective justice for various legal contexts: for the grounds of liability in negligence, contract, and unjust enrichment; for the relationship between right and remedy; for legal education; for the comparative understanding of private law; and for the compatibility of corrective justice with state support for the poor.Combining legal and philosophical analysis, Corrective Justice integrates a concrete and wide-ranging treatment of legal doctrine with a unitary and comprehensive set of theoretical ideas. Alongside the revised edition of The Idea of Private Law, it will be essential reading for all academics, lawyers, and students engaged in understanding the foundations of private law.

Private law governs our most pervasive relationships with other people: the wrongs we do to one another, the property we own and exclude from others' use, the contracts we make and break, and the benefits realized at another's expense that we cannot justly retain. The major rules of private law are well known, but how they are organized, explained, and justified is a matter of fierce debate by lawyers, economists, and philosophers. Ernest Weinrib made a seminal contribution to the understanding of private law with his first book, The Idea of Private Law. In it, he argued that there is a special morality intrinsic to private law: the morality of corrective justice. By understanding the nature of corrective justice we understand the purpose of private law - which is simply to be private law. In this book Weinrib takes up and develops his account of corrective justice, its nature, and its role in understanding the law. He begins by setting out the conceptual components of corrective justice, drawing a model of a moral relationship between two equals and the rights and duties that exist between them. He then explains the significance of corrective justice for various legal contexts: for the grounds of liability in negligence, contract, and unjust enrichment; for the relationship between right and remedy; for legal education; for the comparative understanding of private law; and for the compatibility of corrective justice with state support for the poor. Combining legal and philosophical analysis, Corrective Justice integrates a concrete and wide-ranging treatment of legal doctrine with a unitary and comprehensive set of theoretical ideas. Alongside the revised edition of The Idea of Private Law, it is essential reading for all academics, lawyers, and students engaged in understanding the foundations of private law.

Nearly twenty years after its original publication, The Idea of Private Law is widely recognized as a seminal contribution to legal philosophy, and one of the leading attempts to explain and justify the moral foundations of private law. Rejecting the functionalism popular among legal scholars, Ernest Weinrib advances the provocative idea that private law is an autonomous and non-instrumental moral practice, with its own structure and rationality. Weinrib draws on Kant and Aristotle to set out an approach to private law that repudiates the identification of law with politics or economics. Weinrib argues that private law is to be understood not as a mechanism for promoting efficiency but as a juridical enterprise in which coherent public reason elaborates the norms implicit in the parties' interaction. Private law, Weinrib tells us, embodies a special morality that links the doer and the sufferer of harm. Weinrib elucidates the standpoint internal to this morality, in opposition to functionalists, who view private law as an instrument in the service of external and independently justifiable goals. After establishing the inadequacy of functionalist approaches, Weinrib traces the implications of the formalism he proposes for our ideas of the structure, coherence, and normative grounding of private law. Furthermore, the author shows how this formalism manifests itself in the leading doctrines of private law liability. Finally, he describes the public but non-political role of the courts in articulating the special morality of private law.This revised edition makes accessible one of the major works of modern legal theory. It includes a new introduction by the author, looking back at the work, its origins, and its aspirations.

Nearly twenty years after its original publication, The Idea of Private Law is widely recognized as a seminal contribution to legal philosophy, and one of the leading attempts to explain and justify the moral foundations of private law. Rejecting the functionalism popular among legal scholars, Ernest Weinrib advances the provocative idea that private law is an autonomous and non-instrumental moral practice, with its own structure and rationality. Weinrib draws on Kant and Aristotle to set out an approach to private law that repudiates the identification of law with politics or economics. Weinrib argues that private law is to be understood not as a mechanism for promoting efficiency but as a juridical enterprise in which coherent public reason elaborates the norms implicit in the parties' interaction. Private law, Weinrib tells us, embodies a special morality that links the doer and the sufferer of harm. Weinrib elucidates the standpoint internal to this morality, in opposition to functionalists, who view private law as an instrument in the service of external and independently justifiable goals. After establishing the inadequacy of functionalist approaches, Weinrib traces the implications of the formalism he proposes for our ideas of the structure, coherence, and normative grounding of private law. Furthermore, the author shows how this formalism manifests itself in the leading doctrines of private law liability. Finally, he describes the public but non-political role of the courts in articulating the special morality of private law.This revised edition makes accessible one of the major works of modern legal theory. It includes a new introduction by the author, looking back at the work, its origins, and its aspirations.

As pauperism and begging dramatically increased throughout Europe in the sixteenth century, poverty began to be treated as the object of governmental regulation rather than of individual benevolence. The new approach – which has been viewed as the early glimmering of the modern welfare state – aroused much controversy. This book presents translations of Domingo de Soto’s intervention in the controversy (In Causa Pauperum Deliberatio), as well as of his treatments of poverty and property in his magisterial De Iustitia et Iure and elsewhere. Accompanying the translations is an extensive introductory essay that analyses the juridical significance of Soto’s reflections on rights, poverty, and property. Among other matters, the introductory essay elucidates Soto’s notion of the right to beg, as well as the different ways to conceptualize the relationship between extreme necessity and private property. Throughout, Soto’s views are presented in the light of other scholastic thinkers from whom he drew, or with whom he disagreed, or who explicated his ideas. The essay also notes connections to the thought of the great Dutch jurist of the next century, Hugo Grotius.Legal theorist and classicist Ernest Weinrib brings together the disciplines to illuminate Soto’s role in the intellectual history of poverty and of its relation to private property.

This title was first published in 2002. The first series of The International Library of Essays in Law and Legal Theory has established itself as a major research resource. The rapid growth of theoretically interesting scholarly work in law has increased a demand for a Second Series which includes significant recent work and also gives an opportunity to include additional areas of law. The new series follows the successful pattern established in the first of reproducing entire essays with the original page numbers as an aid to comprehensive research and accurate referencing. Volume editors have selected not only the most influential essays but those which they consider will be of greatest continuing importance. Each volume has an introduction which explains the context and the significance of the essays chosen.