Geoffrey Samuel, LAW OF OBLIGATIONS Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd (www.e-elgar.co.uk), 2010. xxxix + 358 pp. ISBN 9781848447646. £89.95.
| Date | 01 January 2011 |
| Pages | 149-151 |
| Published date | 01 January 2011 |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2011.0011 |
| Author | Martin Hogg |
This book is a challenging addition to a field in which English law is somewhat lacking in works treating of the modern “law of obligations” in the round. The historical reasons for the very late (in comparative terms) development of a taxonomic category of obligations in the Common Law has been well documented by David Ibbetson in his renowned work
Those seeking to find in the work a plan for aligning the Common Law of obligations with the new European
Samuel's choice of that category for the title of his book appears essentially to have been made in order to demonstrate that there is, in reality, no such coherent legal category within English law. As he robustly puts it, “the common law has never subscribed to, or even had any notion of, a general theory of obligations … There has never been anything above or beyond the specific categories of contract, tort and restitution. There is, in short, no point in the common law adopting the category” (332). Some might feel that this is a conclusion which underestimates the growing appreciation in the Common Law of the unremarkable nature of many instances of concurrent liability (a subject barely addressed by Samuel), and hence of the connections and overlaps of the various obligations recognised by the law. Moreover, it arguably overlooks both the legacy of Lord Mansfield (who does not feature in the index to the book) as well as the influence on English law of Pothier (who is mentioned several times in the index), whose
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