The Unity of the Common Law

In this classic study, Alan Brudner investigates the basic structure of the common law of transactions.For decades, that structure has been the subject of intense debate between formalists, who say that transactional law is a private law for interacting parties, and functionalists, who say that it is a public law serving the collective ends of society.Against both camps, Brudner proposes a synthesis of formalism and functionalism in which private law is modified by a common good without being subservient to it.Drawing on Hegel's legal philosophy, the author exhibits this synthesis in each of transactional law's main divisions: property, contract, unjust enrichment, and tort.Each is a whole composed of private-law and public-law parts that complement each other, and the idea connecting the parts to each other is also latently present in each.Moreover, Brudner argues, a single narrative thread connects the divisions of transactional law to each other.Not a row of disconnected fields, tra