Unjust Enrichment and Restitution in European Private Law, Much Ado About Nothing?

On 2 May 2023 the Obligations Group held a lunchtime seminar titled 'Unjust Enrichment and Restitution in European Private Law, Much Ado About Nothing?' presented by Valentin Pinel le Dret (Sorbonne) and chaired by Professor Katy Barnett.

For nearly half a century, unjust enrichment and restitution have been a subject of intense discussions in Germany, in England, and in most of the common law tradition, but these legal topics did not really succeed in interesting French lawyers. The reason for this très cordiale indifférence might lie in the fact that, beside the notorious lack of interest most French academics have for comparative law, unjust enrichment and restitution are not really a “thing” in France. Interestingly however, some European scholars managed to integrate French law into the mainstream unjust enrichment and restitution schemes, notably by mobilising Roman law concepts or by importing German and English law analytical models. Despite some remarkable theories, which have been corroborated by some internal doctrinal studies, those endeavours are not successful. We might question the soundness and relevance the unjust enrichment scholarship in European Private Law, which seems to have reached a dead end.

^{Photo by Giammarco Boscaro on Unsplash}