Common law doctrine states that although there are many similarities, the estate of a deceased person is not a trust. The doctrine is unclear, however, as to exactly what are the differences, or why they exist. This paper begins by explaining the conceptual differences between a common law...

This text is a chapter in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of the New Private Law. It aims to answer the question, “what can the civil law tradition tell us about the New Private Law?” It seeks to do this by offering one civilian’s perspective on private law, on U.S. private law, and on the...

Holders of public office, whether elected or not, exercise a range of legal powers, and it would seem to go without saying that they should do so in the public interest. There have always been opportunities to misuse such powers and, what is a separate but overlapping problem, to extract...