Remedies in Restitution

Abstract

Abstract As we have seen, Roman law recognized particular cases of what we now call unjust enrichment. But historically, the idea that there is a general law of unjust enrichment, coeval with contract and tort, originated in the 16th century when a group of jurists known to historians as the ‘ late scholastics’ considered the implications of Aristotle’ s idea of commutative justice. As we have seen, these earlier jurists followed Thomas Aquinas. He observed that, as a matter of commutative justice, a person who had another’ s property might be liable for two different reasons: because of the way in which he initially acquired it (acceptio rei) or simply because he still has it (ipsa rei acceptio). The way in which he acquired it might have been wtaerongful, in which case he was liable even if he no longer had the property. Ir might have been rightful and with the owner’ s consent, in which case whether he was liable depended on the type of agreement he had with the owner.