Gifts: A Study in Comparative Law

Over the past two thousand years, Western legal systems have had to alter some of their most basic principles in order to regulate the giving of gifts. This is a study of how legal concepts from the marketplace have been reshaped to accommodate a fundamentally different type of social practice. Richard Hyland examines the law of gifts in England, India, and the United States, and in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

Gifts also surveys the extensive discussion about gift giving in anthropology, history, economics, philosophy, and sociology. In addition, Hyland offers a critique of the functionalist method in comparative law and demonstrates the benefits of an interpretive approach.

Richard Hyland is Distinguished Professor at the Rutgers University Law School in Camden, New Jersey. He has published widely in the fields of comparative law, commercial law, and legal theory. He has also taught as a visiting professor at universities in Barcelona, Graz, Hanoi, Kyoto, Lisbon, Paris, and Tokyo and has held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Beijing and the DAAD Professorship in Berlin.