The relationship between remedial and substantive law is poorly understood. The typical starting point is an assumption that remedies somehow confirm or rubber-stamp substantive rights. We then struggle to explain perceived shortcomings in achieving that end. This lecture focuses on the characteristic common law approaches to private law disputes, and suggests that we would understand these approaches better if we discarded completely our misconceived starting assumption and focused on identifying the distinctive general principles that unite the entirety of remedial law (including the rules governing both ‘legal’ and ‘equitable’ remedies).
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