The Concept of Non-Contractual Obligations

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The Concept of Non-Contractual Obligations: Rethinking the Divisions of
Tort, Unjustified Enrichment, and Contract Law
Article
in
Journal of European Tort Law · March 2010
DOI: 10.1515/JETL.2010.16
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Nils Jansen
University of Münster
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1 
 
The Concept of Non-Contractual Obligations: 
Rethinking the Divisions of Tort, Unjustified Enrichment, 
and Contract Law 
Nils Jansen
*
Abstract: The article proposes a concept of ‘non-contractual obligations’ as a 
fundamental legal category for European private law. Non-contractual obligations 
are an internally coherent part of the law of obligations, and they are 
fundamentally different from contractual obligations. Unjustified enrichment and 
tort law should therefore not be treated as independent or opposed types of 
obligations. A fundamental aspect of this conception is that ‘unjustified enrichment’ 
should not be misunderstood as a distinctive legal category; rather, it is a reason 
for liability that is functionally and structurally comparable with concepts such as 
fault or individual responsibility which apply throughout the legal system as a 
whole. To clarify the distribution between contractual and non-contractual 
obligations, the interplay of contractual and non-contractual rules and principles in 
borderline areas such as pre-contractual negligence is analysed.
(2010) 1 JETL 
Non-contractual obligations are not a well-established concept of European private 
law. The European law library contains many textbooks and treatises on contract 
law,
1
on tort law,
2
on restitution,
3
and on the law of obligations as a whole,
4
but no 
*
Professor of Roman and European Private Law and Director of the Institute of Legal History at the 
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. This paper was presented in an 
Aktuelle Stunde
at the 
Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Hamburg, in December 2009. I 
am grateful to all participants for their stimulating discussion. 
1
H Kötz
, European Contract Law, vol 1: Formation, Validity, and Content of Contracts; Contracts 
and Third Partie (transl by T Weir (1997); 
H Beale/AS Hartkamp/H Kötz/D Tallon
(eds), Cases, 
Materials and Text on Contract Law (2002).There are also textbooks on the 
acquis communautaire
, 
yet those textbooks, usually confined to contract law, are in the present context of little interest.
2
C von Bar
, The Common European Law of Torts, 2 vols (1998/2000); 
C van Dam
, European Tort 
Law (2006); 
W van Gerven/J Lever/P Larouche
, Cases, Materials and Text on National, 
Supranational and International Tort Law (2000). The concepts „delict‟ and „tort‟ misleadingly imply 
that liability depends on some wrongful act. Yet, a „tortfeasor‟ may be liable even when he 
committed no wrong and clearly acted lawfully when causing the damage; necessity is an example of 
such instance of liability. Here, the terms „delict‟ and „tort‟ are used in a broad sense covering also 
extra-contractual liability that is independent of a wrong. 
3