The law of unjustified enrichment alongside contract law and tort law has since Roman antiquity formed the third pillar of the law of obligations. Without regulations governing compensation for such enrichment, a European law of obligations would be incomplete. At a 2003 conference of the private law section of the German Society for Comparative Law (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Rechtsvergleichung) in Dresden, possible structures of a European law of enrichment were presented from a comparative perspective.

Two contributions on enrichment by transfer and restitution for wrongs formed the central part of the conference. Both focused, in particular, on German and English law as the two main exponents of the civil law and common law jurisdictions in Europe. Two other contributions dealt with the structure of liability for unjustified enrichment in the Dutch Civil Code (a legal system that has traditionally been influenced by French law) and in Scotland and South Africa (two mixed legal systems at the intersection of civil law and common law). Finally, the relevant proposals advanced by the draftsmen of the (third) Restatement of the Law of Restitution in the United States and of the Study Group on a European Civil Code in Europe were critically examined.

In 2005, Mohr Siebeck published a collective volume consisting of the presentations delivered at the conference.

The work contains the following essays:

Reinhard Zimmermann: Bereicherungsrecht in Europa: Eine Einführung

Christiane C. Wendehorst: Die Leistungskondiktion und ihre Binnenstruktur in rechtsvergleichender Perspektive

Thomas Krebs: Eingriffskondiktion und Restitution for Wrongs im englischen Recht

Jacques du Plessis: Towards a Rational Structure of Liability for Unjustified Enrichment: Thoughts from Two Mixed Jurisdictions

Hugo J. van Kooten: The Structure of Liability for Unjustified Enrichment in Dutch Law, with Reference to German, French and Italian Law

Mark P. Gergen: Self-Interested Intervention in the Law of Unjust Enrichment

Stephen Swann: The Structure of Liabilty for Unjustified Enrichment: First Proposals of the Study Group on a European Civil Code

Peter Huber: Diskussionsbericht der Tagung der Gesellschaft für Rechtsvergleichung, Sitzung der Fachgruppe Zivilrecht