This book is a sophisticated comparative analysis of the doctrine of unjust enrichment in the North American and Jewish legal systems, and in international law. By offering an explanatory theory which brings to light the normative underpinnings of the doctrine, it facilitates the prediction of legal outcomes and supplies the necessary tools for evaluating existing legal rules. Applying both theoretical analysis and comparative legal techniques, the study claims that the choice of compensation arising from a claim of unjust enrichment is not a matter of legal technicality. Instead it describes how the legal choice of a pecuniary remedy can be seen to embody a choice between competing values. This decision, writes Dagan, is implicated in the prevailing background ethos of the society at issue, and is deeply influenced by its own complex conceptions of self and of community.

'Hanoch Dagan's new book on unjust enrichment is the best in the field in many years. It reflects Professor Dagan's sure mastery of all the relevant doctrine and his understanding of contemporary methods of philosophic and economic analysis. In applying these new methods to the old doctrines, Dagan has illuminated this important area of law in an original and highly provocative way.' Anthony T. Kronman, Yale Law School