DUTIES AND LIABILITIES IN PRIVATE LAW

Liabilities in Private Law

This article elaborates upon and defends the distinction between “primary duty” claims and “primary liability” claims in private law introduced in a previous article. In particular, I discuss the relevance of the distinction to the debates over fault and strict liability and “duty skepticism” and to the relationship between primary and remedial rights. I argue that the tendency to assume that a...

Whose Duties and Liabilities to Third Parties?

Private and Public Circulating Liabilities

Legal and technological changes have made private banknote issue, or its electronic equivalent, possible. We construct a model where private liabilities circulate, either by themselves or alongside outside money. We provide results on existence and multiplicity of equilibria and characterize dynamics near steady states. Our results support Friedman in that circulating private liabilities are as...

Contingent Government Liabilities against Private Expectations in England, 1743-49

England financed its war of the Austrian succession (1743-48) mainly by issuing 3% bonds and 4% callable bonds which were indeed redeemed by Pelham in 1749 through an interest reduction. Implicit policy rules and constraints made the 4% bond a derivative asset of a 3% perpetual. The price data fit with a model of pricing of this derivative. The estimated model shows that the redemption terms we...

Distributive Injustice and Private Law