The growth of Blockchain technology presents a number of legal questions for lawyers, regulators and industry participants alike. This book identifies the legal challenges posed by cryptocurrencies, smart contracts and other applications of Blockchain, questioning whether these challenges can be addressed within the current legal system, or whether significant changes are required. Chapters assess how Blockchain's many applications will affect different areas of law, including contract, criminal, financial and private international law. Contributors analyse how these fields of law may need to adapt to accommodate Blockchain technology, proposing possible solutions and ways forward. Several chapters are based on the Swiss legal framework as it allows market participants the widest freedom to operate in Blockchains and cryptocurrencies. Overall, this illuminating work highlights the importance of creating a regulatory structure that will allow Blockchain technologies to develop, whilst also ensuring they are not abused. The conclusions of this book are however quite reassuring, with contributing authors suggesting that although disruptive, the challenges brought about by the 'Blockchain revolution' can, for the most part, be effectively addressed within the law as we know it. This book will be a valuable resource for practising lawyers and academic researchers who are interested in understanding more about how legal and regulatory systems will be affected by the implementation of Blockchain technologies. Contributors include: A. Alberini, V. Botteron, C. Boulay, N. Capus, B. Carron, P. Delimatsis, F. Guillaume, O. Hari, B. Homsy, D. Kraus, M. Le Boudec, V. Mignon, T. Obrist, V. Pfammatter, R.A. Pfister, V. Salomon, P. Witzig

This work contains within a single book an account of all the forms of estoppel in operation today, including estoppel by record (res iudicata), as well as of the associated doctrine of election. There can be few practitioners who do not at some time have to engage with estoppel. Estoppel applies across all, or nearly all, English civil law. In explaining each form of estoppel an attempt is made to state the main elements which have to be proved to establish the estoppel and then to detail each element with its various components. At the end of each chapter a brief summary of the estoppel is included so as to guide practitioners and others to any question important in any particular case. The law of estoppel has considerably advanced over recent decades, and over the last 10 years alone there have been major changes, such as the clarification of the previously uncertain boundaries of proprietary estoppel, a statement of the exceptions to the principles of res iudicata, and the extension law as well as of fact. These and other subjects are explained in full.

This brand new title brings together the different streams of the transfer landscape and outlines the separate legal rules all in one accessible place. Data transfers (under data protection legal rules) are one of the most discussed areas of data protection, and are currently undergoing mass change. Following on from Brexit, professionals now have more than one set of transfer rules to comply with, including: - New Adequacy Decision - New Standard Contracts - Forthcoming UK Contracts - Consultation on future laws

This book starts by surveying the use or neglect of good faith in European contract law and traces its historical origins. Its central part takes thirty hypothetical situations that have attracted the application of good faith and analyzes them according to fifteen national legal systems. It concludes by explaining how European lawyers, whether from a civil or common law background, need to come to terms with the principle of good faith.

A thought-provoking analysis of remedies for breach of contract, this book examines the commitment of English law to the protection of contractual performance. It considers specific remedies, termination, compensatory damages, gain-based monetary awards, punitive damages, and contractually negotiated remedies. It also looks forward by considering how the protection of performance could be strengthened in the future. The book approaches English law remedies for breach of contract through the comparative study of French law, which offers significant scope for informative contrast. It sheds new light on contractual remedies in both jurisdictions and challenges fundamental aspects of English law in this area. With coverage of lively academic debates and recent developments in the case law on both sides of the Channel, the book discusses topical issues. There is also commentary on aspects of two recent far-reaching reform projects relating to the French Civil code and of the Draft Common Frame of Reference. Indispensable reading for private lawyers from common and civil law backgrounds with an interest in remedies for breach of contract, whether comparatists or not, the book should prove to be an invaluable resource for students, academics and practitioners on the current state and future reform of the law in this area.

This edited volume provides critical reflections on the interplay between politics and law in an increasingly transnationalized global political economy. It focuses specifically on the emergence and operation of new forms of governance that are developing through a variety of transnational contractual practices, institutions, and laws in multiple sectors and areas of economic activity. Interdisciplinary in nature, the volume includes contributions from law, political science, sociology, and international politics, with the focus on the political foundations of transnational contract being both original and path-breaking. Placing power at the center of the analysis, the volume reveals the heterogeneous landscape of contemporary law-making and the different kinds of politics giving rise to this form of global ordering. As the contributors note, this new form of governance requires a different type of political theory and legal theory, with the volume advancing understanding of the analytical, theoretical and normative dimensions of private transnational governance by contract, making a valuable contribution to new theory in law and politics. It will be of great interest to students and academics in law, political science, international relations, international political economy and sociology, as well as international commercial arbitration lawyers, trade and investment lawyers, and legal firms.

Changing Concepts of Contract is a prestigious collection of essays that re-examines the remarkable contributions of Ian Macneil to the study of contract law and contracting behaviour. Ian Macneil, who taught at Cornell University, the University of Virginia and, latterly, at Northwestern University, was the principal architect of relational contract theory, an approach that sought to direct attention to the context in which contracts are made. In this collection, nine leading UK contract law scholars re-consider Macneil's work and examine his theories in light of new social and technological circumstances. In doing so, they reveal relational contract theory to be a pertinent and insightful framework for the study and practice of the subject, one that presents a powerful challenge to the limits of orthodox contract law scholarship. In tandem with his academic life, Ian Macneil was also the 46th Chief of the Clan Macneil. Included in this volume is a Preface by his son Rory Macneil, the 47th Chief, who reflects on the influences on his father's thinking of those experiences outside academia. The collection also includes a Foreword by Stewart Macaulay, Malcolm Pitman Sharp Hilldale Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an Introduction by Jay M Feinman, Distinguished Professor of Law at Rutgers School of Law.

A straightforward description providing readers with a guide to contract law as it relates to construction contracting. Thoroughly explains when a lawyer may or may not be needed and offers guidance for working with one. Prior notice provisions, no damage for delay clauses and conditional payment provisions are among the topics covered. Includes hundreds of actual construction cases.

Regulating Law explores how the goals and policies of the new regulatory state are fundamentally reshaping jurisprudence in the domains of public law, private law, and the regulation of work and business. Fourteen areas of the core legal curriculum are reassessed from the standpoint of the impact of regulation on mainstream legal doctrine. The volume examines the collision of regulation by law with regulation by other means and provides an innovative regulatory perspective for the whole of law. To date, regulatory scholarship has mainly been applied to specific legislative programs and/or agencies for the social and economic regulation of business. In this volume, a cast of internationally renowned legal scholars each apply a 'regulatory perspective' to their own area of law. Their contributions provide a rich analysis of the limits and potential of legal doctrine as an instrument of control both in regulatory settings, and in settings traditionally immune from regulatory analysis. The result is an examination of the regulation of the doctrines of law itself, and of the way in which law regulates other forms of regulation and social ordering- law as subject and object of regulation.

This volume presents concepts, policies and cost models for various long-term warranty and maintenance contracts. It offers several numerical examples for estimating costs to both the manufacturer and consumer. Long-term warranties and maintenance contracts are becoming increasingly popular, as these types of aftersales services provide assurance to consumers that they can enjoy long, reliable service, and protect them from defects and the potentially high costs of repairs. Studying long-term warranty and service contracts is important to manufacturers and consumers alike, as offering long-term warranty and maintenance contracts produce additional costs for manufacturers / service providers over the product's service life. These costs must be factored into the price, or the manufacturer / dealer will incur losses instead of making a profit. On the other hand, the buyer / consumer needs to weigh the cost of maintaining it over its service life and to decide whether or not these policies are worth purchasing. There are a number of complexities involved in developing failure and cost models for these policies due to uncertainties concerning the service life, usage pattern, maintenance work and long-term costs of rectifications. Mathematical models for predicting failures and expected costs for various one-dimensional long-term warranty policies are developed at the system level and analyzed by taking into account the uncertainties in connection with longer coverage periods and the rectification costs over the warranty period. Failures and costs are modeled using stochastic techniques and illustrated by means of numerical examples for estimating costs to the manufacturer and consumer. Various rectification policies are proposed and analyzed. The models developed here can be used to aid in managerial decisions on purchasing products with long-term warranty policies and maintenance contracts or outsourcing maintenance.

Evidence-based medical guidelines are an inescapable element of current medical practice, but how are they developed? This book interrogates what causes these differences and similarities between guidelines and uncovers the mechanisms behind the development of medical practice guidelines. Four case studies, on lower back pain and on type 2 diabetes in England and the Netherlands, are used to provide a detailed empirical account of the development of medical guidelines. Interviews with guideline developers are combined with a detailed analysis of guideline documents. Theories from science and technology studies, institutional literature, group decision-making, and professional self-regulation are used to demonstrate how the development of guidelines involves a series of subjective choices driven by economic, cultural, institutional and political frames. Medical evidence plays a more limited and nuanced role in guideline construction than might be expected. Professional Regulation and Medical Guidelines sheds light on the power of experts and institutions to shape the governance of healthcare, and argues for greater transparency of the processes by which experts decide on the gold standard of care. The book will be of interest to guideline developers, medical professionals, policy makers, sociologists and lawyers who are interested in the interaction of science and law. It provides rich empirical data into the often opaque and little understood world of rule-making by experts.

Which member of the NEC3 family of contracts should I use? How do I choose and use my main and secondary options? What are the roles and responsibilities of the various parties? How should I effectively manage early warnings and compensation events? Important questions can arise when working with NEC3 contracts, some of them have simple answers and others require more a detailed response. Whether you are an NEC3 beginner or an expert, the 100 questions and answers in this book are a priceless reference to have at your fingertips. Covering issues that can arise from the full range of NEC3 forms, Kelvin Hughes draws on questions he has been asked during his 20 years working with NEC and presenting training courses to advise, warn of common mistakes, and explain in plain English how these contracts are meant to be used.

If, as John Rawls famously suggests, justice is the first virtue of social institutions, how are we to understand the institution of contract law? This book proposes a Rawlsian theory of contract law. It argues that justice requires that we understand contract rules in terms of the idea of reasonable, terms of interaction - that is, terms that would be accepted by reasonable persons moved by a desire for a social world in which they, as free and equal, can cooperate with others on terms they accept. On that basis, the book explains the main doctrines of contract law, including those governing third parties, in both the Common Law and the Civil Law.

This volume explores the philosophical concept of 'exploitation' in the law relating to the formation of contracts. It discusses the criteria for a claim of 'legal contractual exploitation'. These criteria reveal a conception of exploitation that is sensitive to the conceptual, institutional, and administrative distinctions associated with the classic liberal conception of the contract. The consequences of this conception of exploitation upon the contract law doctrines of unconscionable dealing, duress, and undue influence are examined in depth.

This book explores the source and extent of the right of parties to an international contract to make appropriate arrangements for the determination of their legal relationship, primarily by selecting the applicable law, but also by selecting the judicial or arbitral forum. The book focuses on the legal systems of the United States, the Commonwealth jurisdictions and the civil law countries of western and central Europe, taking as a starting point the provisions of the several Hague Conventions on the Choice of Law in Sales and other contracts, the Rome Convention of 1980 on the Law Applicable to International Contracts and the Mexico Convention of 1994 on the same topic, as well as modern legislation on conflicts of law. Nygh's aim is to discern a general consensus, where present, and to argue for a further development and extension of the principles of autonomy unhampered by historical notions of territoriality and sovereignty, which hitherto have sought to restrain it, with only such limitations as can be justified for the protection of weaker parties or genuine state interests. This fascinating analysis, written from the author's unique perspective, will be welcomed by practitioners and scholars alike. This book is part of the Oxford Monographs in Private International Law series, the aim of which is to publish work of high quality and originality in a number of important areas of private international law. The series is intended for both scholarly and practitioner readers.

Vitiation of Contracts proposes a new theory to explain the rationale of general vitiating factors in English contract law. It provides a clear link to voluntariness as the foundation of contractual liability and compares the English position, in light of this theory, with the Principles of International Commercial Contracts (PICC), the Principles of European Contract Law (PECL), the Draft Common Frame of Reference (DCFR) and the US Restatement (Second) of Contracts.

Despite abundant literature on transaction costs, there is little to no in-depth analysis regarding what the transaction is or how it works. Drawing on both Old and New Institutional Economics and on a variety of interdisciplinary sources, this monograph traces the history of the meaning of transaction in institutional economics, mapping its topicality and use over time. This manuscript treats the idea of 'transaction' as a construct with legal, competitive and political dimensions, and connects different approaches within institutional economics. The book covers the contributions of key thinkers from different schools, including (in alphabetical order) Ronald H. Coase, John R. Commons, Robert Lee Hale, Oliver Hart, Mancur Olson, Thorstein Veblen and Olver E. Williamson. This book will be of interest to advanced students and researchers of institutional economics, law and economics, and economics, and the history of economic thought.

This book and the accompanying electronic download is a major new edition and allows you access to thousands of skillfully drafted contract clauses across a range of industries and scenarios which you can edit and adapt. It has been used by lawyers, agents, distributors, producers, authors, trade and regulatory organisations and commercial companies since 1996. Samples of the types of agreements include commissioning, production, distribution and sponsorship agreements, exclusive licences, location access, buyouts and assignments, merchandising and sub-licensing to third parties. It is a great stepping stone from a contract law course - and a useful training tool and resource as it helps you understand the actual issues and the variety of choices which are made relating to copyright and contracts in the real world. This book will fast track your ability to understand copyright, rights and contracts to another level and be used routinely for inspiration and ideas. The clauses will help you protect your copyright, limit your liability, restrict the scope of an indemnity and encourage you to increase your potential revenue. The sub-section relating to the Internet, Websites and Apps has been expanded as have many sections throughout the book. There are numerous definitions including Rights, Gross Receipts, Territory and Title. You are able to research potential topics by name and use the extensive cross references in the index. The whole purpose of this book is to help you understand what terms you could negotiate which are to your advantage; to be able to propose actual clauses when you ask for amendments to a contract; and to ensure that you draft documents which cover all the important topics. The aim is to improve your background knowledge of contract drafting which in turn will develop your negotiation skills. Each clause in this book is like a building block in the steps to create a contract. Clauses are deliberatedly drafted in a wide variety of ways - and favour one party or the other. There are eight new articles; a new section on Codes and Policies and hundreds of new clauses.

In its case law, the European Court of Human Rights has acknowledged that national courts are bound to give effect to Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) which sets out the right to private and family life, when they rule on controversies between private individuals. Article 8 of the ECHR has thus been accorded mittelbare Drittwirkung or indirect 'third-party' effect in private law relationships. The German law of privacy, centring on the "allgemeines Persoenlichkeitsrecht", has quite a long history, and the influence of the European Court of Human Rights' interpretation of the ECHR has led to a strengthening of privacy protection in the German law. This book considers how English courts could possibly use and adapt structures adopted by the German legal order in response to rulings from the European Court of Human Rights, to strengthen the protection of privacy in the private sphere.

The recent financial crisis has questioned whether existing contracts may be adapted, terminated or renegotiated as a result of unexpected circumstances. The question is not a new one. In medieval times the notion of clausula rebus sic stantibus was developed to cope with such situations, and Germany introduced the theory of Wegfall der Geschaftsgrundlage. In England, the Coronation cases provided one possible answer. This comparative study explores the possibility of classifying jurisdictions as 'open' or 'closed' in this regard.

Representing an unprecedented joint effort from top scholars in the field, this volume collects original contributions to examine the fundamental role of 'fault' in contract law. Is it immoral to breach a contract? Should a breaching party be punished more harshly for willful breach? Does it matter if the victim of breach engaged in contributory fault? Is there room for a calculus of fault within the 'efficient breach' framework? For generations, contract liability has been viewed as a no-fault regime, in sharp contrast to tort liability. Is this dichotomy real? Is it justified? How do the American and European traditions compare? In exploring these and related issues, the essays in this volume bring together a variety of outlooks, including economic, psychological, philosophical, and comparative approaches to law.

* No other book captures how construction industry relationships and practices have influenced the common law of contracts in the United States

This volume presents the first comprehensive examination of the legal issues surrounding international debt recovery on claims against Iraqi oil and gas. In addition to presenting a snapshot view of Iraq's outstanding debt obligations and an analysis of the significance of the theory of odious debt in the context of the Iraqi situation, the list of legal issues examined includes relevant provisions of the Iraqi Constitution of 2005, controlling Security Council resolutions, pertinent articles of the KRG oil and gas law (No. 22) of 2007 and the many nuanced and technical questions raised thereby, legal pronouncements aimed at protecting Iraqi oil and gas and those adopted in selected other nations, and general problems associated with recognition and enforcement of awards or judgments that may involve such oil and gas or revenues from the sale thereof. Also discussed are the lessons learned by the handling of the Iraq debt experience and the transferability of those lessons to future situations.

Every legal system must decide how to distinguish between agreements that are enforceable and those that are not. Formal bargains in the marketplace and casual promises in a social setting mark the two extremes, but many hard cases lie between. When gaps are left in a contract, how should courts fill them? What does it mean to say that an agreement is legally enforceable? If someone breaks a legally enforceable contract, what consequences follow? For 150 years, legal scholars have debated whether a set of coherent principles provide answers to such basic questions. Oliver Wendell Holmes put forward the affirmative case, arguing that bargained-for consideration, expectation damages, and a handful of related ideas captured the essence of contract law. The work of the next several generations, culminating in Grant Gilmore's The Death of Contract in 1974, took a contrary view. The coherence Holmes had tried to bring to the field was illusory. It was more sensible to see contracts as merely a species of civil obligation and resist the temptation to impose rigid and artificial rules. In Reconstructing Contracts, Douglas Baird takes stock of the current state of contract doctrine and in the process reinvigorates the classic framework of Anglo-American contract law. He shows that Holmes's principles are fundamentally sound. Even if they lack that talismanic quality formerly ascribed to them, properly understood they continue to provide the best guide to contracts for a new generation of students, practitioners, and judges.

Written by a member of the FIDIC President's List of Adjudicators, this detailed and critical commentary on the FIDIC Red Book provides authoritative guidance and recommendations for best practice. Focusing on each Clause of the Condition of Contract, this book identifies pitfalls and logistics issues associated with its enforcement and ancillary processes, to give readers an advantage when operating with the FIDIC Red Book. Intended to promote the best use and growth of FIDIC, this guide will be essential for all users of the FIDIC Red Book, be they contractors, lawyers, engineers, students training to join these industries or any professional involved in the resolution of disputes involving the FIDIC Red Book.