Full Description
The aim of this edited collection of essays is to examine the relationship between private law and power - both the public power of the state and the 'private' power of institutions and individuals. It describes and critically assesses the way that private law doctrines, institutions, processes and rules express, moderate, facilitate and control relationships of power. The various chapters of this work examine the dynamics of the relationship between private law and power from a number of different perspectives - historical, theoretical, doctrinal and comparative. They have been commissioned from leading experts in the field of private law, from several different Commonwealth Jurisdictions (Australia, the UK, Canada and New Zealand), each with expertise in the particular sphere of their contribution. They aim to illuminate the past and assist in resolving some contemporary, difficult legal issues relating to the shape, scope and content of private law and its difficult relationship with power.
Contents
Part 1: Issues
1. The Dynamics of Private Law and Power
Kit Barker
Part 2: Power, History and Society
2. Power, History and the Law of Contract in Eighteenth Century England
Warren Swain
3. Redressing Inequality in Personal Credit Transactions: 1700-1974
Karen Fairweather
4. Tort Law and Government Liability in the Administrative State
Peter Cane
Part 3: Doctrines, Institutions and Process
5. Property and Power: The Judicial Redistribution of Proprietary Rights
Craig Rotherham
6. Trustees' Powers and Social Justice
Matthew Harding
7. Undue Infl uence and the Spiritual Economy
Simone Degeling
8. A Public Law Tort: Understanding Misfeasance in Public Office
Donal Nolan
9. Public Power, Discretion and the Duty of Care
Kit Barker
10. The Legitimacy of the Company as a Source of (Private) Power
Ross Grantham
11. Reshaping Responsibility: The Emerging Private Law of Institutional Wrongs
Mayo Moran
12. Class Actions: Uses and Abuses of the Process of Courts
Justice Philip McMurdo
