The Canadian Law of Obligations: Access to Justice

"Overall, this book serves as a timely addition to the existing body of literature covering contracts, torts, and restitution. The papers in this volume invite readers to challenge the status quo and re-examine current assumptions on how traditional problems relating to contracts, torts, property, unjust enrichment, and civil procedure are addressed. The papers are each written with the underlying intention of reducing barriers present in people’s actual lived experience."

Reviewed by Emily Nickerson, Law & Business Librarian
University of Victoria

See Review in 2021 Canadian Law Library Review 46:2 (pages 31-32)

This book is second in The Canadian Law of Obligations series:
Common and Civil Law: Different Paths or Convergence? (2025)
The Power & Limits of Private Law (2024)
The Canadian Law of Obligations: Access to Justice (2020)
The Canadian Law of Obligations: Private Law for the 21st Century and Beyond (2018)

The nine papers included in this special volume examine emerging issues, themes and controversies within the Canadian Law of Obligations, loosely organized around the theme of access to justice. The papers were developed out of the second “Canadian Law of Obligations” conference, held in 2019, and include a variety of perspectives within the framework of tort, contract, unjust enrichment, property and civil procedure, on approaches to improve the law and advance access to justice in Canada.

The collection is divided into three parts:

• Part I: Contract Law
• Part II: Tort Law
• Part III: Property, Procedure and Unjust Enrichment

The Collection of Papers

1. Angela Swan – It Matters How You Start to Think About a Contracts Problem
2. Chris D.L. Hunt – Unconcionability Three Ways: Unfairness, Consent and Exploitation
3. John Enman-Beech – Unconciable Inaccess to Justice
4. Krish Maharaj – Good for Everyone or Not Good at All: Clarity and Commitment in Contractual Good Faith
5. Joost Blom – Reasonable Expectations as a Basis for Tort Liability
6. Emily Laidlaw & Hilary Young – Creating a Revenge Porn Tort for Canada
7. Matthew P. Harrington – Leapfrogging, Risk, and Unjust Enrichment in Canada after Moore v. Sweet
8. Sarah E. Hamill – Enduring Trespass: What Adverse Possession Reveals about Property
9. Shannon Salter – Court Fee-waiver Processes in Canada: How Wrong Assumptions, Change Resistance, and Data Vacuums Hurt Vulnerable Parties

Who Should Read This Book

• Civil Litigators – assists in developing new perspectives on private law issues, developing innovative civil litigation strategies and formulating corresponding arguments
• Corporate/Commercial Lawyers – provides new perspectives on contract law issues
• Judges – provides new perspectives on the application of private law to modern legal issues, which judges are front and centre in endorsing
• Academia – assists research in the areas discussed, provides a source of course readings and basis for class discussion
• Law Libraries – a useful reference for anyone researching in the area of torts and contracts

The Canadian Law of Obligations: Access to Justice is a collection of papers developed out of the Supreme Court Law Review, Second Series.