Editing Form of action (section)

=== The substantive law ===
With the abolition of the forms of action, it became necessary (and for the first time truly possible) to perceive the substantive law beneath the various actions.<ref name="Kessler_Page_11">{{cite book |last1=Kessler |first1=Amalia D. |author1-link=Amalia Kessler |title=Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800-1877 |date=2017 |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven |isbn=9780300222258 |page=11 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b-vUDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA11 |access-date=October 24, 2023}}</ref>  In terms of the private law of obligations, the following points can be noted.
* ''Contract.'' The various writs by which agreements could be enforced became part of a modern [[English contract law|law of contract]], explicable in terms of consensually assumed obligation. But traces of the old forms of action remain. For example, it is not necessary to show that a claimant has provided consideration where she sues on a deed. This is because consideration was never a requirement in the action of debt ''sur obligation''.
* ''Tort.'' The various writs which involved complaint of a civil wrong and a demand for a remedy came together in a [[English tort law|law of tort]]. 
* ''Unjust enrichment.'' At first, common law restitutionary obligations were appended to the law of contract and said to form a law of [[quasi-contract]]. Motivated by the writing of scholars from [[University of Oxford|Oxford]] and [[Cambridge University|Cambridge]] the courts gradually accepted that such obligations were of another kind, underpinned by the concept of [[unjust enrichment]].<ref>See generally, Robert Goff and Gareth Jones, ''The Law of Restitution'' (1st ed, 1966); Peter Birks, ''An Introduction to the Law of Restitution'' (1985); Virgo, ''Principles of the Law of Restitution'' (3rd ed, 2011); Andrew Burrows, ''Law of Restitution'' (3rd ed, 2011).</ref> In ''[[Lipkin Gorman v Karpnale Ltd]]'' [1991] the House of Lords explicitly recognised the independent existence of the [[English unjust enrichment law|law of unjust enrichment]].