The development of the law of obligations across the common law world has been, and continues to be, a story of unity and divergence. Its common origins continue to exert a powerful stabilizing influence, carried forward by a methodology that places heavy weight on the historical foundations of legal principles. Divergence is, however, produced by numerous factors, including national and international human rights instruments, local statutory regimes, civil law influences, regional harmonization, local circumstances and values, and different political and legal cultures. The essays in this...

This book is a study of doctrinal and methodological divergence in the common law of obligations. It explores particular departures from the common law mainstream, the causes and effects of those departures, and the extent to which they undermine the idea of the common law as a single transnational body of law. Some divergences can be justified on the basis of a need to adapt the common law of contract, torts, equity, and restitution to local circumstances, or to bring them into conformity with local values. More commonly, however, doctrinal or methodological divergence simply reflects...