The province of the doctrine of unjustifed enrichment in continental law

Abstract

ANYONE who attempts to speak on Unjustified Enrichment in these dynamic days is instantly haunted by the reflection that he is somehow embarking on a discussion of some new-fangled political creed. Certainly the familiar French axiom nul ne doit s'enrichir injustement aux depens d'autrui sounds attractive enough to be mistaken for a slogan, while its implications appear at first blush to be no less pregnant with political meaning. No one, it is said, must enrich himself unjustly at his neighbour's expense: and is not this a palatable way of saying that no one is permitted to acquire riches or to retain them? Beyond doubt, it is true to say that in an economic system where the means of production are State-owned and State-controlled, the acquisitive propensities of the individual are restricted to the wages he is capable of earning from the State, and nothing more besides. Accordingly, if a purely collectivist society is contemplated, it becomes fundamental to hold that to enrich one's self is necessarily to do so at the expense of one's neighbour; and further, if by injustice is meant "social injustice", as the French school of social solidarity would have the early twentieth century jurists believe, then it soon begins to look obvious that any variety of enrichment is unconscionable.