Contract

Author(s):  
James Gordley

‘Classical’ contract law was built on a substantive premise about contract law and two premises about legal method. The substantive premise was voluntaristic: the business of contract law is to enforce the will or choice of the parties. The first methodological premise was positivistic: the law is found, implicitly or explicitly, in the decisions of common law judges. The second methodological premise was conceptualistic: the law should be stated in general formulas which can be tested by their coherence. Finally, ‘classical’ contract law reflected an attitude about how best to steer a course — as every legal system must — between strict rules and equitable considerations. Since the early twentieth century, classical contract law has been breaking down. Allegiance to its premises has weakened as has the preference for rigor. At the same time, scholars have found classical law to be inconsistent even in its own terms. Nevertheless, much of it has remained in place faute de mieux while contemporary jurists have tried to see what is really at stake in particular legal problems. This article describes their work.

Author(s):  
Eva Steiner

This chapter examines the law of contract in France and discusses the milestone reform of French contract law. While this new legislation introduces a fresh equilibrium between the contracting parties and enhances accessibility and legal certainty in contract, it does not radically change the state of the law in this area. In addition, it does not strongly impact the traditional philosophical foundations of the law of contract. The reform, in short, looks more like a tidying up operation rather than a far-reaching transformation of the law. Therefore, the chapter argues that it is questionable whether the new law, which was also intended to increase France's attractiveness against the background of a world market dominated by the Common Law, will keep its promise.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-50
Author(s):  
Poku Adusei

This article provides comprehensive insights into the study of the Ghana legal system as an academic discipline in the law faculties in Ghana. It urges the view that the study of the Ghana legal system, as an academic discipline, should be transsystemic. Transsystemic pedagogy consists in the introduction of ideas, structures and principles which may be drawn from different legal traditions such as civil law, common law, religion-based law, African law and socialist law traditions to influence the study of law. Transsystemia involves teaching law ‘across,’ ‘through,’ and ‘beyond’ disciplinary fixations associated with a particular legal system. It is a mode of scholarship that defies biased allegiance to one legal tradition in order to foster cross-cultural dialogue among legal traditions. It involves a study of law that re-directs focus from one concerned with ‘pure’ legal system to a discourse that is grounded on multiple legal traditions.


Author(s):  
Maksymilian Pazdan

The position of the executor of the will is governed by the law applicable to succession (Article 23(2)(f) of the EU Regulation 650/2012), while the position of the succession administrator of the estate of a business of a physical person located in Poland is subject to the Law of 5 July 2018 on the succession administration of the business of a physical person (the legal basis for such solution is in Article 30 of the EU Regulation 650/2012). However, if the court needs to determine the law applicable to certain aspects of appointing or functioning of these institutions, which have a nature of partial or preliminary questions, these laws will apply, as determined in line with the methods elaborated to deal with partial and preliminary questions in private international law. The rules devoted to the executors of wills are usually not self-standing. In such situations, the legislators most often call for supportive application of the rules designed for other matters existing in the same legal system (here — of the legis successionis). This is referred to as the absorption of the legal rules.


competency in a narrow field of practical legal method and practical reason. Then, a philosophical argument will be appreciated, considered, evaluated and either accepted or rejected. This is not a theoretical text designed to discuss in detail the importance of a range of legal doctrines such as precedent and the crucial importance of case authority. Other texts deal with these pivotal matters and students must also carefully study these. Further, this is not a book that critiques itself or engages in a post-modern reminder that what we know and see is only a chosen, constructed fragment of what may be the truth. Although self-critique is a valid enterprise, a fragmentary understanding of ‘the whole’ is all that can ever be grasped. This is a ‘how to do’ text; a practical manual. As such, it concerns itself primarily with the issues set out below: How to … (a) develop an awareness of the importance of understanding the influence and power of language; (b) read and understand texts talking about the law; (c) read and understand texts of law (law cases; legislation (in the form of primary legislation or secondary, statutory instruments, bye-laws, etc), European Community legislation (in the form of regulations, directives)); (d) identify, construct and evaluate legal arguments; (e) use texts about the law and texts of the law to construct arguments to produce plausible solutions to problems (real or hypothetical, in the form of essays, case studies, questions, practical problems); (f) make comprehensible the interrelationships between cases and statutes, disputes and legal rules, primary and secondary texts; (g) search for intertextual pathways to lay bare the first steps in argument identification; (h) identify the relationship of the text being read to those texts produced before or after it; (i) write legal essays and answer problem questions; (j) deal with European influence on English law. The chapters are intended to be read, initially, in order as material in earlier chapters will be used to reinforce points made later. Indeed, all the chapters are leading to the final two chapters which concentrate on piecing together a range of skills and offering solutions to legal problems. See Figure 1.1, below, which details the structure of the book. There is often more than one solution to a legal problem. Judges make choices when attempting to apply the law. The study of law is about critiquing the choices made, as well as critiquing the rules themselves. However, individual chapters can also be looked at in isolation by readers seeking to understand specific issues such as how to read a law report (Chapter 4) or how to begin to construct an argument (Chapter 7). The material in this book has been used by access to law students, LLB students and at Masters level to explain and reinforce connections between texts in the construction of argument to non-law students beginning study of law subjects.

2012 ◽  
pp. 16-16

2021 ◽  
pp. 61-84
Author(s):  
Omri Ben-Shahar ◽  
Ariel Porat

This chapter illustrates personalized law “in action” by examining it in three areas of the law: standards of care under the common law tort doctrine of negligence, mandated consumer protections in contract law, and criminal sanctions. In each area, the chapter examines personalization of commands along several dimensions. In tort law, standards of care could vary according to each injurer’s riskiness and skill, to reduce the costs of accidents. In contract law, mandatory protections could vary according to the value they provide each consumer and differential cost they impose on firms, to allocate protections where, and only where, they are justified. And in criminal law, sanctions would be set based on what it takes to deter criminals, accounting for how perpetrators differ in their motives and likelihood of being apprehended, with the potential to reduce unnecessary harsh penalties.


Author(s):  
N.E. Simmonds

Theories of contract law seek to articulate general principles and values underpinning the complex rules of contract law. Some theorists view contract law as simply concerned to facilitate individual choices and enforce the will of the parties. A rival view holds that it is impossible to derive the content of contract law from such a sparse foundation: contract law is better viewed as one of the instruments whereby the state regulates markets and distributes resources and power. The debate addresses the detailed technicalities of the law, but seeks to relate these technicalities to broader questions of political philosophy.


Author(s):  
MP Furmston

Cheshire, Fifoot & Furmston’s Law of Contract is a classic text on contract law. The first edition was published over seventy years ago. The book combines an account of the principles of the law of contract with analysis and insights, and the narrative brings understanding of complex contractual issues to a wider readership. It starts by providing a historic introduction, and goes on to look at issues such as modern contract law, agreement, consideration, and legal relations. The book details the contents of the contract and looks at unenforceable contracts, mistake, misrepresentation, duress, and undue influence. Chapters then examine contracts rendered void under statute, contracts illegal by statute or at common law, and contracts void at common law due to public policy. The text moves on to look at privity, rights and liabilities, performance and breach, and discharge under the doctrine of frustration. Finally, the book looks at remedies for breach of contract.


Author(s):  
Stephen J. Morse

Stephen J. Morse argues that neuroscience raises no new challenges for the existence, source, and content of meaning, morals, and purpose in human life, nor for the robust conceptions of agency and autonomy underpinning law and responsibility. Proponents of revolutionizing the law and legal system make two arguments. The first appeals to determinism and the person as a “victim of neuronal circumstances” (VNC) or “just a pack of neurons” (PON). The second defend “hard incompatibilism. ” Morse reviews the law’s psychology, concept of personhood, and criteria for criminal responsibility, arguing that neither determinism nor VNC/PON are new to neuroscience and neither justifies revolutionary abandonment of moral and legal concepts and practices evolved over centuries in both common law and civil law countries. He argues that, although the metaphysical premises for responsibility or jettisoning it cannot be decisively resolved, the hard incompatibilist vision is not normatively desirable even if achievable.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 367-379
Author(s):  
Charles Fried

Abstract In The Choice Theory of Contracts, Hanoch Dagan and Michael Heller state that by arguing “that autonomy matters centrally to contract,” Contract as Promise makes an “enduring contribution . . . but [its] specific arguments faltered because [they] missed the role of diverse contract types and because [it] grounded contractual freedom in a flawed rights-based view. . .. We can now say all rights-based arguments for contractual autonomy have failed.” The authors conclude that their proposed choice theory “approach returns analysis to the mainstream of twentieth-century liberalism – a tradition concerned with enhancing self-determination that is mostly absent in contract theory today.” Perhaps the signal flaw in Contract as Promise they sought to address was the homogenization of all contract types under a single paradigm. In this Article, I defend the promise principle as the appropriate paradigm for the regime of contract law. Along the way I defend the Kantian account of this subject, while acknowledging that state enforcement necessarily introduces elements — both normative and institutional — for which that paradigm fails adequately to account. Of particular interest and validity is Dagan and Heller’s discussion of contract types, to which the law has always and inevitably recurred. They show how this apparent constraint on contractual freedom actually enhances freedom to contract. I discuss what I have learned from their discussion: that choice like languages, is “lumpy,” so that realistically choices must be made between and framed within available types, off the rack, as it were, and not bespoke on each occasion. I do ask as well how these types come into being mutate, and can be deliberately adapted to changing circumstances.


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