Can the Unjust Enrichment Doctrine Work?
There are a few ways around the statute of limitations problem. One would be to change the statute of limitations by legislation. (As California did in order to insure that certain Holocaust suits would not be time-barred.) Another is to base the tort claims on international law, a move that might dramatically affect the applicability of statute of limitations. But the most frequently discussed maneuver is to change the nature of the claim. Some including Randall Robinson, the author of The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks have argued that the simplest, most direct way to frame a legal claim would be to pursue a claim for unjust enrichment against anyone who currently possesses property (or the fruits of property) that resulted from the torts inflicted on African-Americans during slavery. Unjust enrichment has traditionally been a sleepy backwater of American law. It is usually viewed as a doctrine governing what remedy a plaintiff who has succeeded on another cause of action may requ
