The Death of the Irreparable Injury Rule

Abstract The irreparable injury rule, a fixture of Anglo-American law, has been the subject of much recent scholarly debate. The rule asserts that courts should not prevent a potential wrongdoer from causing harm unless the resulting damage would be ‘irreparable’ because the victim could not be compensated monetarily for it. Drawing on an analysis of hundreds of randomly selected cases, Douglas Laycock argues that the rule is defunct since it no longer constrains courts’ choice of remedy. Focusing on what courts do rather than what they say, Laycock proposes new injury rules based on actual practice and reconceives the law of remedies and the relationship between law and equity, two of the great divisions of Anglo-American civil law.