Principles of Debt Law, Volume 2: Unjust Enrichment

Author: Wang Zejian
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-05-01
Features: My book on unjust enrichment was first published in 1990. In 2000, I wrote a long preface to comprehensively discuss the changes in case law and academic theories since then. This revision incorporates recent practical cases, supplements new literature, re-examines controversial issues, strengthens theoretical arguments, and adds appendices, increasing the content by over 200 pages. Although I have strived for completeness, errors are inevitable. I sincerely welcome readers' corrections. Regarding unjust enrichment, the current Civil Code stipulates five abstract and general provisions (Articles 179 to 183). Since the implementation of the Civil Code, the Supreme Court has issued 72 judgments, with thousands of related rulings (please refer to the Judicial Data Retrieval page of the Supreme Court for details). These have accumulated a wealth of valuable experience and wisdom, making the law of unjust enrichment a "living law." This book aims to organize and analyze case law and academic theories to construct a theoretical framework for the law of unjust enrichment. Originally, I planned to write another book on case law of unjust enrichment, selecting relevant judgments from the Federal Court of Germany for comparison, in order to conduct comparative research and gain a deeper insight into the practical operation of the law of unjust enrichment (Law in Action), as well as to understand different judicial styles and argumentation methods. This work turned out to be more challenging than anticipated, so I decided to postpone it temporarily and compile the case system of unjust enrichment as Appendix (1), allowing it to correspond with the content of this book to some extent, thereby giving this book a dual function of both a textbook and a case law compilation. This is a new attempt in methodology, hoping to combine theory with practice, which may contribute to the research and development of the law of unjust enrichment.