Handbook

This course examines the taxonomy of the common law's system of civil rights. We will examine the categories and concepts used to explain and distinguish the different parts of the law with a view to understanding the practical implications of the major distinctions within the Australian legal system. We will look at the conceptual distinctions between criminal and civil law, between statute and general law, between common law and equity, between property and obligations, between rights and remedies, between and within contract, tort and restitution. The course will focus on the boundaries between the various fields in the law, their history, rationales and practical implications. Primary materials (cases and statutes) will be analysed in light of the various attempts by textbook writers and theorists to categorise them and the determined opposition in some quarters to rational taxonomy.

Main Topics

• The significance and limitations of legal taxonomy
• Legal personality
• The importance of procedure, pleadings and standing to sue
• The role of precedent
• Legal fictions and other illusory categories of reference
• Law and equity
• Property and obligations
• Rights and remedies
• Contract, its boundaries and divisions
• Wrongs
• From quasi-contract to restitution
• Taxonomical theory