Unjustified enrichment: surveying the landscape
Preliminary questions ‘Unjustified enrichment’. The expression is mysterious. So are the other terms in use for the same subject, ‘unjust enrichment’ and ‘restitution’. What is an enrichment and when is it unjustified? To state that something amounts to unjustified enrichment is merely a conclusion, that because the enrichment is unjustified it should be returned, restored or made over to the person properly entitled to it. That conclusion is in need of supporting normative argument. But what sort of argument? Some time ago the Roman jurist Pomponius wrote the now-famous words nam hoc natura aequum est neminem cum alterius detrimento et iniuria fieri locupletiorem , ‘by the law of nature it is right that nobody should be unjustly enriched at another's expense’. Pomponius's maxim encapsulates the key elements of enrichment liability: enrichment, which is unjust, and which is at the expense of the claimant. But it exemplifies a problem that faces modern legal systems, too: formulating the principles of a law of unjustified enrichment in a way which is clear and yet not excessively broad. There is no doubt that Pomponius's formulation is, as a matter of classical Roman law, much too broad. There were many cases in which unjustified enrichment was simply allowed to rest where it arose. A clear instance is the claim of a possessor in good faith who improved land from which he was later ejected by the true owner.
The Law and Ethics of Restitution: Restitution in contexts of informal intimacy
The preceding chapters, as well as the ones to follow, correspond by and large to the accepted categories of the law of restitution. This chapter is different. It covers an amalgam of restitutionary rules, claiming that together they have a coherent and normatively appealing theme that goes unobserved by the existing literature. The structure of the chapter follows this goal. Sections A–C discuss the three doctrines I seek to integrate: unjust enrichment between cohabitants, restitution for the supply of necessaries, and rescission of gifts due to undue influence. These three doctrines do not easily fit into the familiar categories of restitution. The conferrals of benefits addressed by these seemingly unrelated doctrines can be properly characterized neither as sheer pursuit of self-interest (like the cases discussed in chapter 5) nor as acts of good-samaritanism (like the cases analyzed in chapter 4). As we will see throughout sections A–C, they are better characterized as different aspects of the legal facilitation of relationships of long-term reciprocity. More precisely, this chapter shows how the law of restitution supports the liberal vision of community. By community I refer to “any group of people who share a range of values, a way of life, identify with the group and its practices and recognize each other as members of that group.” In identifying themselves with a community, individuals commit themselves to it: they endorse and promote its projects and regard their own well-being as intimately linked to its flourishing.
Asymptotic Properties of Solutions to Second-Order Difference Equations of Volterra Type
<jats:p>We consider the discrete Volterra type equation of the form <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M1"><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">Δ</mml:mi><mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>r</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi>n</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msub><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">Δ</mml:mi><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>x</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi>n</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msub><mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>b</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi>n</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msub><mml:mo>+</mml:mo><mml:mrow><mml:msubsup><mml:mo stretchy="false">∑</mml:mo><mml:mrow><mml:mi>k</mml:mi><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn mathvariant="normal">1</mml:mn></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi>n</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msubsup><mml:mrow><mml:mi>K</mml:mi><mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo><mml:mi>n</mml:mi><mml:mo>,</mml:mo><mml:mi>k</mml:mi><mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo><mml:mi>f</mml:mi><mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>x</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi>k</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msub><mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:mrow></mml:math>. We present sufficient conditions for the existence of solutions with prescribed asymptotic behavior. Moreover, we study the asymptotic behavior of solutions. We use <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M2"><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">o</mml:mi><mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo><mml:msup><mml:mrow><mml:mi>n</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi>s</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msup><mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo></mml:math>, for given nonpositive real <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M3"><mml:mrow><mml:mi>s</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math>, as a measure of approximation.</jats:p>