Introduction to the Research Handbook on Fiduciary Law

goals or ends of a principal and defends this claim against the charge that his "adopting account" may justify the pursuit of morally illicit ends and that fiduciary obligation is not fulfilled by accidental compliance.And Samuel Bray's chapter focuses on punitive damages as an entry to deeper reflection on the nature of the trust relationship.Regardless of one's starting point, attempts to unify the study of fiduciary law as a distinctive field represent a break from much prior scholarship that treated fiduciary law as a confusing and haphazard collection of relationships and obligations.Many of the chapters in this volume assume the possibility of a unified account of fiduciary law or at least the possibility that one can rationalize aspects of fiduciary law.For example, Evan Criddle expands on his view that the duty of loyalty is necessary under republican legal theory to protect a fiduciary's beneficiaries from domination, and Sung Hui Kim describes ways in which courts regulate the temptation for wrongdoing by fiduciaries through an anti-corruption norm.Matthew Harding does not view trust as essential to all fiduciary relationships, but he suggests that the cultivation of trust should be an important goal in developing fiduciary law.A complicating factor in the quest for a unified understanding of fiduciary law is that the rules governing fiduciary relationships are not unitary across jurisdictions.While all jurisdictions seem to adhere with varying degrees of fidelity to the "no-conflict rule" (instructing fiduciaries to avoid acting in the face of conflict between their personal interests and their duties to the beneficiaries) and the "no-profit rule" (requiring fiduciaries to account to their beneficiaries for any gain received in furtherance of their fiduciary obligation), some jurisdictions limit the reach of fiduciary law to these proscriptions, while other jurisdictions impose affirmative performance obligations on fiduciaries.Several authors in this volume use jurisdictional diversity as a motivation for thinking more deeply about the nature of fiduciary relationships and fiduciary duties.The study of fiduciary law is undergoing a renaissance, with scholars representing many national systems contributing important insights.This volume alone includes legal scholars from the United States, Canada, Israel, Australia, and various countries in Europe.Our hope is that these chapters will advance our understanding of the diversity of approaches that constitute modern scholarship on fiduciary law.We turn now to the chapters themselves.