Explaining Constructive Trusts

Book excerpt: Concerned with "rationalizing the rules" (Preface p. v) of constructive trusts, this reappraisal of the English law of trusts discounts two major existing theses regarding the rules (first, that, based on the North American experience, they should be considered as instruments of restitution; and second, that they are disorganized) and advances Elias' new thesis that "the rules should be regarded as instruments for the rational furtherance of three good aims: (1) making disponors abide by their dispositions...(2) making those who gain through loss to others give the gains up to those others...(3) making those who inflict losses on others repair those losses..." (Preface p. v).