Unjust Enrichment Of The Type Of Study

Unjust enrichment refers to the fact that lack of legal causes incurs benefits but infringes others. It is a legal matter engendered by debts and constitutes the basic system of civil law. It originated from the stipulations in the Roman law whose purpose is to deprive beneficiary of benefits for lack of legal causes. The modern concept of unjust enrichment is based on equity, but when evolving this concept gradually becomes an independent system. Advocated by non-unionism it is classified and its constitutive elements can vary with different provisions of types. Article 92 of China's General Rule of the Civil Law stipulates that "if illegal profits are obtained for lack of legal causes and incur losses to others, the illegal profits should be returned to persons suffering the losses". Although the system of unjust enrichment has gained an independent position in China, the legislation of unjust enrichment is rather crude, and stipulations of its applicability are confined to a rather small scope in judicial practice. Furthermore, there is only a small amount of exploration and study of unjust enrichment in China's judicial circle, and, if any, it merely focuses on requests for returning unjust enrichment and some other issues like requests for competition and combination. Therefore, I choose and analyze the issue of the classification of unjust enrichment to achieve an insightful, theoretical understanding of this forefront subject matter and to improve the applicability and stipulations of unjust enrichment. This thesis is composed of five parts and the contents are briefly expounded as follows:Part I : The first part traces back to the history of unjust enrichment and respectively examines its legislating origins in civil-law system and common-law system. Unjust enrichment in civil-law system, whose basic theory has almost consummated, originated in Roman law and was inherited and developed in French civil law and German civil code and Swiss debt law. In comparison, it took quite a long time before unjust enrichment in common-law system was recognized. This theory is derived from two sources, one evolves from contract and the other from tort. Not until the promulgation of Restatement of the Law onRestitution in 1937 did unjust enrichment in common law formally become the third civil obligation equivalent to contract and tort. Article 92 of China's General Rule of the Civil Law unequivocally stipulates that unjust enrichment is an independent debt rule. But, compared to that of other civil-law countries, China's General Rule of the Civil Law merely stipulates the system of unjust enrichment by means of an article and is hence obviously inadequate. Unjust enrichment in civil-law system originated from Roman law, but what is designated in modem sense did not exist in ancient Rome. Through the heritage and evolution in French civil law and until German civil code, a general rule was formed and its basic theory almost consummated.Part II: The second part deals with the general concept of the classification of unjust enrichment. It is chiefly concemed with the present understanding of 'lack of legal cause" in unjust enrichment in scholarly circles and its subsequent problem of classification. In scholarly terms, scholars advocating unionism hold that the so-called "lack of legal cause" should contain the sense of unionism and that it can expound unjust enrichment under universal circumstances. While scholars advocating non-unionism believe that unjust enrichment has its respective bases and there is no need for it to be unified, hence, we cannot justify the constitutive elements unjust enrichment, instead, we should separately examine unjust enrichment in its own rights. Depending on whether payment occurs, modem unjust enrichment is divided into payment unjust enrichment and non-payment unjust enrichment. There exist discrepancies in legal causes between payment unjust enrichment and non-payment unjust enrichment. I believe that China should also adopt this sort of classification.Part HI: The third part is the first type of unjust enrichment—payment unjust enrichment. This chapter chiefly discusses the constitutive elements of payment unjust enrichment, constitutive elements vary with the causes of unjust enrichment, among which benefiting in payment unjust enrichment means benefiting from payment. Causing losses to others is judged upon payment relationships. Depending on the core constitutive elements of unjust enrichment or lack of legal cause, payment unjust enrichment can be subdivided into beginning purpose non-payment unjust enrichment, non-existent after paymentpurpose unjust enrichment and non-reachable payment purpose unjust enrichment. When an individual benefits from payment and payment purpose is absent, unjust enrichment is tenable and beneficiary obtains requests for payment unjust enrichment. This is the regular occurrence of unjust enrichment. But under special conditions, the exemption of engendering requests for payment unjust enrichment is redeemed as special unjust enrichment in scholarly circles, namely, requests for restitution of unjust enrichment is not permitted.Part IV: Part four focuses on the second type of unjust enrichment, that is, non-payment unjust enrichment. This chapter mainly discusses the type of non-payment unjust enrichment, which is complex and due to the unjust enrichment incurred by causes other than payment reasons. This occurs because of acts, what is stipulated by law and ordinary incidents. The chapter further expounds the status quo of non-payment unjust enrichment in the judicial practice in China in terms of *three enrichments—infringement of others, law stipulation, causes by incidents. The first type takes top priority in non-payment unjust enrichment. Benefiting directly from law stipulation means the fact that if a certain incidents or act occurs unjust enrichment is engendered irrespective of purpose of interested parties. Unjust enrichment incurred by incidents refers to the enrichment caused by legal facts except for acts and bears no reserved rights.Part V: The last chapter deals with problems in China's law on unjust enrichment and the necessity of introducing classification of unjust enrichment. This chapter briefs the unjust enrichment in present civil law legislation and judicial practice in China. There are merely two articles concerning unjust enrichment in China's civil legislation—Article 92 of General Rules of the Civil Law and Article 131 of Suggestions About Implementing General Rules of the Civil Law (trial version) issued by the Supreme Court. These two provisions stipulate the general rules of unjust enrichment but are inadequate. The applicability of unjust enrichment is restricted and conservative in judicial practice. This is principally reflected through affirmation of unjust enrichment, inappropriateness in dealing with requests for unjust enrichment and problems of competition for other requests. By means of a comparative study between legislation and theories, this thesis points out that classification is a necessity for unjust enrichment.