ABSTRACT
Much of the recent debate about the legitimacy of the principle of vindication of property rights
has got stuck on the question of language. Birks is obviously right to state that Vindication of
property rights’ is not an ‘event’.49 It is a principle which is simply not framed in those terms. But
the language could be changed to convert it into an event. For example, the event could be that
the defendant has interfered with the claimant’s property rights in some way. There are a number
of responses to that event, including compensation, but the most important involves the award of
restitutionary remedies, either personal or proprietary. This semantic debate about the nature of
events is not unimportant, but of more interest and practical significance is the question whether
there are any substantive consequences of rejecting the notion of vindicating property rights and
emphasising instead that the triggering ‘event’ is unjust enrichment, as Birks and Burrows in
particular have advocated. This requires consideration of a number of separate issues.
