According to one school of thought, modern private law is undergoing something of a sea-change. It is argued that, across a broad front, the law increasingly places reliance on open ended standards of “fairness” or “reasonableness”: an earlier (and essentially 19th century) effort to develop and refine precise, technical rules has (we are told) increasingly come under strain, been tested and found wanting. If a development of this kind is under way, its implications could be far reaching. On the one hand, it will be less possible for lawyers to establish in advance the precise limits of their clients’ rights and liabilities. On the other hand, the results of litigation may come to accord more closely with the ordinary assumptions and expectations of the parties.

In those areas of law which will interest readers of this Quarterly, proposals to loosen the Victorian grip of the technical system frequently focus on the principle or value of “good faith”. In a variety of contexts, it is argued, such a principle might ground rights and remedies superior to those currently provided by the law. For example, losses arising from pre-contractual negotiations, losses arising from reliance on non-contractual promises, and the predatory exercise of contractual rights for purposes not envisaged by the contract conferring those rights, are all instances where a more general duty to act in good faith might be relevant.

We might reasonably expect a book on Good Faith in English Law to confront some of these issues. O’Connor’s book, however, moves in altogether more placid waters. The author tells us that: “The purpose of this book is to examine the scope and function of the principle of good faith in the English legal system and, if possible, to provide a definition of the principle for that system” (p. 10). To that end he examines the role of good faith in a wide variety of areas of law: administrative law, contract, tort, company law, criminal law, trusts and property. There is also a chapter on civil law systems. Such wide coverage, in a text of 102 pages, ensures that the discussion is never profound (though it must be said that O’Connor writes in a neatly concise way, and packs a good deal into a short space) and that the book’s conclusions are somewhat vacuous (see p. 102).

Much of the book’s coverage is historical, and these sections do not make gripping reading. “Good faith” is really too ill-defined a creature to possess a distinctive history. Even when not sauntering through the gentle countryside of English legal history, however, O’Connor seems to have little desire to bring his discussion to bear on present-day problems. He limits himself to an exposition of the extent to which established rules evince the influence of a principle of good faith. The possible extension of such a principle as a basis for the provision of new remedies is occasionally mentioned (e.g., p. 36) but never seriously discussed.

If a general principle of good faith is discoverable beneath the surface of established rules, and if its contours can be delineated with reasonable precision (both matters on which the reviewer remains sceptical), the interest and importance of such a discovery will lie in the