Jacques du Plessis, THE SOUTH AFRICAN LAW OF UNJUSTIFIED ENRICHMENT Claremont: Juta (www.jutalaw.co.za), 2012. xliv + 436 pp. ISBN 9780702194740. R550.

AuthorDaniel J Carr
DOI10.3366/elr.2013.0143
Published date01 January 2013
Date01 January 2013
Pages102-104

It sometimes feels like the recognition of a South African general enrichment action has been imminent for years. In fairness, the indications have been that such a judicial recognition was, indeed, imminent. Law, however, has a stubborn tendency not to respect predictions: there is still no judicially sanctioned “general enrichment action” in South Africa. Yet, at least, as du Plessis explains, the judiciary have accepted the idea of a general action. Full recognition seems tantalisingly close. Therefore, the challenge for South African text writers has been to explain not only the characteristics of any emerging general action – which this text does in an astonishingly accessible way; they have also had to identify how any such action might fit into the existing legal landscape. That challenge dovetails with the broader, and admittedly more venerable, need to make doctrinal space for the relatively recent development of enrichment law as an independent discipline.

Scottish lawyers have much to gain from works like these, and not only because of a juridical camaraderie flowing from being “mixed” legal systems at a general level. Affinities between the two systems’ enrichment laws, and theorists, run deep. This text is a welcome adornment to that comity. Furthermore, the relatively recent revamp of Scottish unjust(ified) enrichment law, that culminated in Lord Rodger's decision in Shilliday v Smith 1998 SC 725, has bestowed a strikingly similar legacy: something that looks akin to a general enrichment action, but which is, probably, not quite the real thing. That, at least, was the view advanced by Lord Rodger, who was well placed to make the observation, writing extra-judicially in 2002. A Scottish lawyer, and almost certainly...

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