Legal Commentary

I am delighted to make available my paper, Friends as Fiduciaries.  I have just uploaded it to SSRN; it is forthcoming in the Wash. U. L. Rev.  Here's an abstract:

The Article argues that the law of fiduciary duties provides a good framework for friends to understand their duties to one another better, gives courts a useful set of rhetorical and analytical tools to employ when they are forced to entertain disputes that arise between close friends, and, finally, can help direct courts to furnish betrayed friends certain kinds of remedies that are most appropriate for achieving justice within that dispute context. This is not the first Article to make an effort to expand the reach of the fiduciary concept into new sorts of relationships that are not always considered within the ambit of fiduciary duty law. But the case for thinking of friends as fiduciaries is exceedingly persuasive and underappreciated, both in the law and in our lives.

Please e-mail me your feedback if you wish.  The research agenda is defended at length in Friendship & the Law, 54 UCLA L. Rev. 631 (2007); this is a second-generation effort to apply the insights of the first article into a specific area of the law.