Most maritime lawyers, one suspects, would readily admit to having a soft spot for general average. Possible reasons may be its venerable historical pedigree and its generally perceived uniquely maritime character and application. This affinity is not diminished by the fact that most of those lawyers would probably not be able to add very much to the well-known historical fact that the fundamental principles of general average were most famously enacted in the Rhodian Law of Jettison. (Perhaps they should not be blamed for this; apart from the fact that the dominance of the York-Antwerp Rules now practically excludes any need for any historical investigation, the works in English on or which mention the history of general average—also in England—are largely inaccessible or, compared with Continental efforts, incomplete.) Their affection is also not diminished by the possibility—continuously explored in civil law and now also beginning to receive attention in English law—that the notions underlying general average may be explicable with reference to some or other general principle encountered and operative in one of the branches of (mainly) terrestrial law. (Perennial contenders, some by now probably no longer seriously so, include the implied agreement, marine insurance, salvage and necessity or negotiorum gestio, the (tacit, maritime) partnership, and the current favourite, restitution for unjust enrichment.)

One would suspect, further, that most maritime lawyers would readily if not quite happily admit that the whole notion of general average as an acceptable contemporary risk-spreading device is under continuous and increasing pressure (see in this regard, e.g., Howard L. Myerson, “General Average—A Working Adjuster’s View” (1995) 26 J.M.L.C. 465). Not only is general average perceived, at least in some quarters, as not or no longer treating the various maritime interests involved in a fair and egalitarian fashion, but it would not surprise if it is (or has been) conclusively demonstrated, probably by some enterprising law-and-economics academic, that in this day and age the practice of general average is cost-effectively an insupportable option.

Be that as it may, for the time being general average is still alive and well in most legal systems, more vigourously in some than in others, and even outside the realm of maritime law (see Matthew L. Iwicki, “Accounting for Relational Financing in the Creditors’ Ex Ante Bargain: Beyond the