Post by Dan Kelly
I am grateful to John and Henry for inviting me to contribute to the New Private Law Blog. Several of the initial posts on this blog, as well as recent posts on other blogs, have raised the question of “What is private law?” (One might also ask: “What is new private law?”) These questions are interesting and important.
As background, I would direct interested readers to several articles from the 2011-2012 Harvard Law Review Symposium on The New Private Law, which were subsequently published in the May 2012 issue of the Harvard Law Review. The symposium includes an introduction by John Goldberg; articles by Shyam Balganesh on copyright; Henry Smith on property; Stephen A. Smith on remedies; and Ben Zipursky on torts; and responses by Abraham Drassinower and Richard Epstein (both responding to Shyam), Eric Claeys and Tom Merrill (both responding to Henry), Emily Sherwin (responding to Steve), and Keith Hylton and John Oberdiek (both responding to Ben).