Zoë Sinel, ‘Concerns about Corrective Justice’

Abstract:
According to the principle of corrective justice, one who causes a wrongful loss or receives a wrongful gain is obligated to make good that loss or restore that gain. The guiding principle of the remedies of private law (the law of torts, contract, and unjust enrichment) is to put the aggrieved party in the position s/he would have been in had the complained of conduct not occurred. The connection between corrective justice and private law’s remedies thus appears analytic. My article challenges this orthodoxy. I argue that, on the one hand, if corrective justice is treated narrowly, as an exclusively remedial principle, it severs the connection between right and remedy that lies at the heart of the corrective justice theories of private law. On the other, if it is interpreted broadly to encompass as well the parties’ original (pre-wrong or pre-unjust enrichment) relationship, it becomes otiose.

€ – Lexis

Zoë Sinel, “Concerns about Corrective Justice”, Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, vol. xxvi, no. 1 (January 2013) pp. 137-156.

First posted 2013-03-07 08:08:33

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