Dr Rachel Leow and Dr Timothy Liau

This course is available on the LLB in Laws. This course is not available as an outside option nor to General Course students.

The course is primarily aimed at students who are interested in a demanding course in advanced private law and presupposes at the very least, a strong grounding in English contract law, trusts law, and property law.

This course will appeal to those with an interest in private law. It builds upon modules taken in the core undergraduate compulsory curriculum (eg contract, property, and equity). Students who enjoyed studying these courses will find that this course advances their understanding of private law as a whole. Many issues in the material covered have practical importance in commercial litigation.

A strong foundation in common law reasoning will be presumed.

This course is about the law of restitution for unjust enrichment: it is concerned with when a defendant may be compelled to make restitution to a claimant, because the defendant has been unjustly enriched at the claimant’s expense.

In England and Wales, unjust enrichment was only first judicially recognised as an independent source of obligations by the House of Lords in 1991 but has now become one of the most vibrant areas of modern private law. Many controversies exist, and the scope of restitution for unjust enrichment is still being worked out by courts across the common law world. In previous private law modules such as Law of Obligations and Property II, you may already have encountered fleeting references to ‘unjust enrichment’, explored in a necessarily superficial way; for example in cases on frustration, illegality, tracing, and knowing receipt.



The course aims to develop in students a deeper understanding of unjust enrichment, and its place within the broader map of private law. Generating distinctive rights and obligations, it forms a body of law independent from the laws of contract and torts, cutting across the jurisdictional divide between the common law and equity. After this course, students will be introduced to some modern debates about unjust enrichment, as well as accurately describe, apply, and evaluate the law of unjust enrichment in England and Wales.

This course will appeal to those with an interest in private law. It builds upon modules taken in the core undergraduate compulsory curriculum (eg contract, property, and equity). Students who enjoyed studying these courses will find that this course advances their understanding of private law as a whole. Many issues in the material covered have practical importance in commercial litigation.

20 hours of seminars in the AT.

Students will have the opportunity to produce one formative essay or problem question answer during the course.

• Peter Birks, Unjust Enrichment, 2nd ed (OUP 2005)
• Andrew Burrows, The Law of Restitution, 3rd ed (OUP 2011)
• James Edelman and Elise Bant, Unjust Enrichment, 2nd ed (Hart 2016)
• Charles Mitchell, Paul Mitchell, and Stephen Watterson (eds), Goff & Jones on Unjust Enrichment, 10th ed (Sweet & Maxwell 2022)
• Robert Stevens, The Laws of Restitution (OUP 2023)
• Elise Bant, Simone Degeling, and Kit Barker (eds) Research Handbook on Unjust Enrichment and Restitution (Edward Elgar Publishing 2020)

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours and 30 minutes) in the spring exam period.