ABSTRACT
This chapter portrays some of these controversies as symptoms or illustrations of more fundamental theoretical questions about the very nature of trusts and of trusting relationships in law. It explores the legal concept of the trust to ideas expressed in literature in social theory about the nature of social trust in general. By social trust is meant trust in a broad moral sense: involving reliance, in social relationships, on other people's goodwill, solicitude and competence; or a confidence. The chapter presents a framework for understanding the legal concept of trust in its moral and social context by recognising that trusting as a social or moral relationship raises acute issues of power and dependence. The factors of size and expertise encourage a profound remoteness—a substantial 'moral distance'—between the trusting and the trusted which makes the decision whether or not to retain confidence in the trust relationship increasingly unreal.
