The Oxford Handbook of the New Private Law

Abstract

This book discusses developments in scholarship dedicated to reinvigorating the study of the broad domain of private law. This field, which embraces the traditional common law subjects “property, contracts, and torts” as well as adjacent, more statutory areas, such as intellectual property and commercial law, also includes important subjects that have been neglected in the United States but are beginning to make a comeback. The book particularly focuses on the New Private Law, an approach that aims to bring a new outlook to the study of private law by moving beyond reductively instrumentalist policy evaluation and narrow, rule-by-rule, doctrine-by-doctrine analysis, so as to consider and capture how private law’s various features fit and work together, as well as the normative underpinnings of these larger structures. This movement is resuscitating the notion of private law itself in United States and has brought an interdisciplinary perspective to the more traditional, doctrinal approach prevalent in Commonwealth countries. The book embraces a broad range of perspectives to private law “including philosophical, economic, historical, and psychological” yet it offers a unifying theme of seriousness about the structure and content of private law.