The 'Frontiers of Liability' is the title of a series of high-level seminars held in All Souls College, Oxford during 1993 and 1994. Drawing together top academics, practitioners and judges, these seminars have sought to identify current trends in English law and have provided a forum for experts to give their assessment of how the law will develop in the future. The papers produced for the first four seminars were reproduced in volume 1 of 'Frontiers of Liability'. The next four seminars and the comments made by the distinguished rapporteurs are reproduced in this volume. These essays will be of interest to anyone concerned with international sales, the law of contract, tort and restitution, and equity and trusts.

For some Western European legal systems the principle of good faith has proved central to the development of their law of contracts, while in others it has been marginalized or even rejected. This book starts by surveying the use or neglect of good faith in these legal systems and explaining its historical origins. The central part of the book takes thirty situations which would, in some legal systems, attract the application of good faith, analyses them according to fifteen national legal systems and assesses the practical significance of both the principle of good faith and its relationship to other contractual and non-contractual doctrines and forms of regulation in each situation. The book concludes by explaining how European lawyers, whether from a civil or common law background, may need to come to terms with the principle of good faith. This was the first completed project of The Common Core of European Private Law launched at the University of Trento.

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.

"Efficient breach" is one of the most discussed topics in the literature of law and economics. What remedy incentivizes the parties of a contract to perform contracts if and only if it is efficient? This book provides a new perception based on an in-depth analysis of the impact the market structure, asymmetry of information, and deviations from the rational choice model have, comprehensively. The author compares the two predominant remedies for breach of contract which have been adopted by most jurisdictions and also found access to international conventions like the Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CiSG): Specific performance and expectation damages. The book illustrates the complexity such a comparison has under more realistic assumptions. The author shows that no simple answer is possible, but one needs to account for the circumstances. The comparison takes an economic approach to law applying game theory. The game-theoretic models are consistent throughout the entire book which makes it easy for the reader to understand what effects different assumptions about the market structure, the distribution of information, and deviations from the rational choice model have, and how they are intertwined.

This volume focuses on transparency as the guiding principle for insurance regulation and supervisory law. All chapters were written by experts in their respective fields, who address transparency in a wide range of European and non-European jurisdictions. Each chapter reviews the transparency principles applicable in the jurisdiction discussed. While the European jurisdictions reflect different facets of the principle as emerging from EU law on insurance, the principle has developed quite differently in other jurisdictions.

The impact of freedom of contract in the 19th century extended far beyond the legal arena as an economic slogan and an ethical attitude. Atiyah traces the development and subsequent decline of the freedom of contract, depicting its effects on the law's development and the foundation of contractual obligations, as well as its broader implications for 19th century English life.

This open access volume of the AIDA Europe Research Series on Insurance Law and Regulation offers the first comprehensive legal and regulatory analysis of the Insurance Distribution Directive (IDD). The IDD came into force on 1 October 2018 and regulates the distribution of insurance products in the EU. The book examines the main changes accompanying the IDD and analyses its impact on insurance distributors, i.e., insurance intermediaries and insurance undertakings, as well as the market. Drawing on interrelations between the rules of the Directive and other fields that are relevant to the distribution of insurance products, it explores various topics related to the interpretation of the IDD - e.g. the harmonization achieved under it; its role as a benchmark for national legislators; and its interplay with other regulations and sciences - while also providing an empirical analysis of the standardised pre-contractual information document. Accordingly, the book offers a wealth of valuable insights for academics, regulators, practitioners and students who are interested in issues concerning insurance distribution.

This book represents a unique resource about Stewart Macaulay one of the common law world's leading scholars of the law of contract and of the law in action approach to the study of law. Since 1959, he has published over 50 articles in leading journals, a number of working papers, (with colleagues at the University of Wisconsin Law School) a pathbreaking casebook for the teaching of the law of contract, and (with other colleagues) equally pathbreaking collections of materials for the teaching of the law in action or law in context approach to the study of law. In this work Macaulay has established himself as one of the postwar world's leading scholars of the law of contract and of the sociology of law. His work is an absolute reference point in both disciplines, and it has attracted great attention elsewhere, most notably in economic sociology, where his concept of non-contractual economic relationships is regarded as an important theoretical innovation. Macaulay's work has become an object of commentary in its own right, and the proposed book is intended to assist further such commentary by making hitherto difficult to obtain works readily accessible. Most of Macaulay's work is now, when the leading journals are generally available in electronic form, readily accessible to students and researchers in universities. There are, however, a number of interesting and in most cases important works published in less accessible journals or works which were not published in an electronic form, which are difficult to obtain. This book will make them readily available, and in so doing will make it possible in future for scholars to have Macaulay's complete oeuvre readily to hand. Although Macaulay's work has provoked very considerable discussion, there previously have been no overall accounts of that work as opposed to critical engagements with aspects of it. In this book, two additional essays by leading commentators give accounts of Macaulay's work and provide an introduction to, exegesis of and general evaluation of Macaulay's work as a whole which is not to be found in the existing literature.

Previous editions of this text have consistently been a favourite amongst common law lawyers. This new edition has been brought fully up-to-date and will be of interest to those studying 'advanced' obligations/common law modules. Undergraduates who study contract courses with a strong socio-legal tradition will also find this text invaluable as it uniquely grounds the nature of contract law in its social and political context.

This book gives a detailed account of the current state of the law concerning good faith in contractual performance in Australia, through an empirical study on its reception and development across the various Australian jurisdictions. In Australia, good faith received wide attention after Priestly J introduced in his obiter comments in Renard Construction (ME) v Minister for Works (1992) 26 NSWLR 234.This book focuses on the attitude of the judges to good faith, the definition of good faith, and the possibility of legislating a good faith obligation in Australian contract law. This book also discusses the issues surrounding its development, its meaning, and acceptance at the international level.The empirical legal research adopted in this book will offer a significant contribution in understanding the concept of good faith in Australia from the empirical perspective.

This Volume of the AIDA Europe Research Series on Insurance Law and Regulation focuses on transparency as the guiding principle of modern insurance law. It consists of chapters written by leaders in the respective field, who address transparency in a range of civil and common law jurisdictions, along with overview chapters. Each chapter reviews the transparency principles applicable in the jurisdiction discussed. Whether expressly or impliedly, all jurisdictions recognize a duty on the part of the insured to make a fair presentation of the risk when submitting a proposal for cover to the insurers, although there is little consensus on the scope of that duty. Disputed matters in this regard include: whether it is satisfied by honest answers to express questions, or whether there is a spontaneous duty of disclosure; whether facts relating to the insured's character, as opposed to the nature of the risk itself, are to be presented to the insurers; the role of insurance intermediaries in the placement process; and the remedy for breach of duty. Transparency is, however, a much wider concept. Potential policyholders are in principle entitled to be made aware of the key terms of coverage and to be warned of hidden traps (such as conditions precedent, average clauses and excess provisions), but there are a range of different approaches. Some jurisdictions have adopted a "soft law" approach, using codes of practice for pre-contract disclosure, while other jurisdictions employ the rather nebulous duty of (utmost) good faith. Leaving aside placement, transparency is also demanded after the policy has been incepted. The insured is required to be transparent during the claims process. There is less consistency in national legislation regarding the implementation of transparency by insurers in the context of handling claims.

The emergence of a European private law is a key legal issue today. Set-off and "extinctive" prescription are neglected topics in comparative literature. Reinhard Zimmermann maps out a model for a common European approach, providing practical examples of the arguments that may be employed in the process of harmonizing European private law. The essays originated during his work with the Commission on European Contract Law (the "Lando-Commission"), whose task is the "restatement" of European contract law. This volume is for comparative lawyers and legal historians.

Remedies is the subject of increasing academic interest. It is one of the key organising concepts of the obligations approach to the common law, the pre-eminent approach in law schools, now officially sanctioned by the Law Society. This second edition modernizes the first edition quite considerably. This work determines the place of remedies in contract and tort within the current debate about the reform of the common law obligation.

The product of a unique collaboration between academic scholars, legal practitioners, and technology experts, this Handbook is the first of its kind to analyze the ongoing evolution of smart contracts, based upon blockchain technology, from the perspective of existing legal frameworks - namely, contract law. The book's coverage ranges across many areas of smart contracts and electronic or digital platforms to illuminate the impact of new, and often disruptive, technologies on the law. With a mix of scholarly commentary and practical application, chapter authors provide expert insights on the core issues involving the use of smart contracts, concluding that smart contracts cannot supplant contract law and the courts, but leaving open the question of whether there is a need for specialized regulations to prevent abuse. This book should be read by anyone interested in the disruptive effect of new technologies on the law generally, and contract law in particular.

Although the law of contract is largely settled, there is at present no widely-accepted comprehensive theory of its main principles and doctrines or of its normative basis. This collection of six full-length and original essays, written by some of the most eminent scholars in the field, explores the general theory of contract law from a variety of theoretical perspectives. While the essays build on past theoretical contributions, they also attempt to take contract theory further and suggest new and promising ways to develop theory of contract law.

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.

This Volume of the AIDA Europe Research Series on Insurance Law and Regulation explores the key trends in InsurTech and the potential legal and regulatory issues that accompany them. There is a proliferation of ideas and concepts within InsurTech that will fundamentally change the market in the next few years. These innovations have the potential to change the way the insurance industry works and alter the relationships between customers and insurers, resulting in insurance products that are more closely aligned to individual preferences and priced more appropriately to the risk. Increasing use of technology in the insurance sector is having both a disruptive and transformative impact on areas including product development, distribution, modelling, underwriting and claims and administration practice. The result is a new industry, known as InsurTech. But while the insurance market looks to technology for greater efficiency, regulators are beginning to raise concerns about managing potential risks. The first part of the book examines technological innovations relevant for insurance, such as FinTech, InsurTech, Sharing Economy, and the Internet of Things. The second part then gathers contributions on insurance contract law in a digitalized world, while the third part focuses on cyber insurance and robots. Last but not least, the fourth part of the book discusses legal and ethical questions regarding autonomous vehicles and transportation, including the shipping industry, as well as their impact on the insurance sector and civil liability. Written by legal scholars and practitioners, the book offers international, comparative and European perspectives. The Chapters "FinTech, InsurTech and the Regulators" by Viktoria Chatzara, "Smart Contracts in Insurance. A Law and Futurology Perspective" by Angelo Borselli and "Room for Compulsory Product Liability Insurance in the European Union for Smart Robots?" by Aysegul Bugra are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com. All three open access chapters were funded by BIPAR.

Following the success of the first edition, this is the fully updated second edition of A Restatement of the English Law of Contract. Designed to enhance the accessibility of the common law, the Restatement comprises a number of clear and succinct rules, fully explained by a supporting commentary, which set out the general law of contract in England and Wales. Written by one of the leading authorities in this area, in collaboration with an advisory group of senior judges, academics, and legal practitioners, the Restatement offers a novel and powerfully persuasive statement of the law in this central area of English law. All lawyers dealing with the English law of contract, whether as practitioners, judges, academics, or law students, will benefit from this Restatement. The English law of contract is one of the most respected systems of contract law in the world and, by the device of a 'choice of law' clause, is often chosen by foreign commercial parties as the applicable law to govern their contract. One of the aims of the Restatement is for the reader, including those from civil law jurisdictions, to see quickly and easily how the different elements of the English law of contract fit together.

This book explores various approaches around the world regarding price term control, and particularly discusses the effectiveness of two major paths: ex ante regulatory and ex post judicial intervention. Price control and its limits are issues that affect all liberal market economies, as well as more regulated markets. For the past several years, courts in many different countries have been confronted with the issue of whether, and to what extent, they should intervene regarding price-related terms in standard form contracts - especially in the area of consumer contracts. Open price clauses, flat remunerations, price adjustment clauses, clauses giving the seller/supplier the right to ask for additional payments, bundling or partitioning practices, etc.: a variety of price related terms are used to manipulate customers' choices, often also by exploiting their behavioral biases. The result is an unfavorable contract that is later challenged in court. However, invalidating a given price term in standard forms e.g. of a banking or utilities contract only has an inter partes effect, which means that in thousands if not millions of similar contracts, the same clauses continue to be used. Effective procedural rules are often lacking. Therefore, pricing patterns that serve to hide rather than to reveal the real cost of goods and services require special attention on the part of regulators. The aim of this book is to determine the various approaches in the world regarding price term control, and particularly to discuss the efficiency of both paths, ex ante regulatory and ex post judicial intervention. Thanks to its broad comparative analysis, this book offers a thorough overview of the methods employed in several countries. It gathers twenty-eight contributions from national rapporteurs and one supra-national rapporteur (EU) to the 2018 IACL Congress held in Fukuoka. These are supplemented by a general report presented at the same IACL Congress, which includes a comparative analysis of the national and supranational reports. The national contributors hail from around the globe, including Africa (1), Asia (5), Europe (17), the European Union (1) and the Americas (5).

This second volume on the constitutional dimension of contract law explores this increasingly relevant subject in jurisdictions that are usually overlooked by mainstream scholarship in the English-speaking world. With chapters on Finland and other Nordic Countries from a comparative perspective, Spain, Japan, Somalia, Nigeria, Brazil, and Peru, the contributions presented here offer much-needed, context-informed insights on whether - and if so, why, how and to what extent - the development of contract law is being influenced by constitutional values and fundamental rights issues (or vice-versa). The book represents a valuable addition to comparative law literature on the interplay between public (i.e., constitutional) and private (i.e., contract) law by revealing the inner dynamics through which these two branches interact and (at times) inform each other, whilst also enhancing our understanding of the law's nature, function, and transformative potential at the macro, meso, and micro levels.

Following the success of the first edition, this is the fully updated second edition of A Restatement of the English Law of Contract. Designed to enhance the accessibility of the common law the Restatement comprises a number of clear and succinct rules, fully explained by a supporting commentary, which set out the general law of contract in England and Wales. Written by one of the leading authorities in this area, in collaboration with an advisory group of senior judges, academics, and legal practitioners, the Restatement offers a novel and powerfully persuasive statement of the law in this central area of English law. All lawyers dealing with the English law of contract, whether as practitioners, judges, academics, or law students, will benefit from this Restatement. The English law of contract is one of the most respected systems of contract law in the world and by the device of a 'choice of law' clause is often chosen by foreign commercial parties as the applicable law to govern their contract. One of the aims of the Restatement is for the reader, including those from civil law jurisdictions, to see quickly and easily how the different elements of the English law of contract fit together.

Providing a comprehensive and detailed treatment of termination as a remedy for breach of contract, this book gives a current account of the law and explains this complex area in a practical context. This book is divided into four parts. The first section sets out to analyse what is involved in termination and looks at some of the difficulties surrounding the topic, before going on to explain the evolution of the present law and its main principles. The second section provides a thorough analysis of the two key topics of breach and termination. Breach is defined in terms of a failure, without good excuse, to perform an obligation under the contract, and the various aspects of this definition are explained in the light of the relevant authorities. The chapter on breach of contract has continued to take on board the developing principles of contractual construction, most notably in relation to the interpretation of exemption clauses, where Supreme Court and Court of Appeal decisions, namely Impact Funding Solutions Ltd v Barrington Support Services Ltd and Persimmon Homes Ltd v Ove Arup and Partners Ltd, have continued to question the extent to which the traditional approach can be reconciled with the broader canons of commercial construction now adopted by the courts. In the following chapter, termination is defined in the terms of an election by the promisee, in consequence of a breach by the promisor, to claim discharge from his or her own primary obligations under the contract. This process, which can also be seen as a major contractual remedy in its own right, is distinguished from other processes with which it has a close relationship, most notable the right to withhold performance and discharge under the doctrine of frustration. The controversial decision of the Court of Appeal in MSC Mediterranean Shipping Co SA v Cottonex Anstalt is discussed here. The third part addresses the question when the right to terminate for breach arises. The law gives two answers to this question - when the term broken is classified as a 'condition' of when a 'fundamental' breach has occurred. The nature of a 'condition' in this sense is explained, and the criteria for identifying when a term should be classified as such is set out. Similarly, the criteria for identifying a fundamental breach is discussed, as is the difficult relationship between the concepts of fundamental breach and repudiation and the doctrine of anticipatory breach. Recent Court of Appeals decisions are included, such as Spar Shipping AS v Grand China Logistics Holding (Group) Co Ltd, which provides useful guidance as to the relationship between conditions and contractual rights of termination. The fourth and final section considers the consequences of the promisee's election whether to terminate. In this section the legal effects of termination with regard to the obligations and remedies available to the promisee and the promisor, and also its effect on the application of other terms in the contract such as exemption clauses, are analysed. The measure of damages available to the promisee following termination, most notable damages 'on the footing of repudiation' or damages for 'loss of the bargain' is also considered here alongside other general principles governing damages in this context. The position on damages in The Golden Victory has been extended further by Bunge SA v Nidera BV as discussed in Chapter 10. Similarly the examination of the Court of Appeal decision in The New Flamenco provides additional authority on mitigation to damages. Principles relating to restitution recovery are re-examined by reference to three major Supreme Court cases on unjust enrichment: Benedetti v Sawiris; Memelaou v Bank of Cyprus UK Ltd; and Investment Trust Companies v Revenue and Customs Commissioners.

Contract Before the Enlightenment represents a fresh investigation of what was then a ground-breaking approach to the law of contract written by James Dalrymple, Viscount Stair (1619-1695), lauded by some as the founding father of Scots law. As a judge and public figure, Stair was at the forefront of both political and legal developments in Scotland from the 1640s until he died in 1695. This study explores the development and reception of his ideas relating to the law of contract on the eve of the Scottish Enlightenment. It is here that Stair's legal legacy is most evident, and where the imprint of Calvinism, Aristotelianism, and Protestant natural law can be found within Scottish legal thought. In his legal treatise, the Institutions of Law of Scotland you find a sophisticated, innovative, and novel synthesis of Roman law with Stair's own Calvinist variant of a Protestant natural law theory. Yet it is also possible to find, once the theistic premises of Stair's natural law theory are dropped, the beginnings of a form of Scottish moral philosophy that rose to prominence in the eighteenth century. Undoubtedly, Stair is not only a key figure within Scottish legal history but also significant to how we understand the transition of Scottish intellectual life from the execution of Charles I to the emergence of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Commercial litigators frequently need to assess whether a disputed contract is valid. This book provides practitioners with an invaluable reference tool, which will enable them to navigate the complex issue of vitiation of contract.

As litigators are aware, when contractual disputes arise, many types of vitiation listed will be argued together or as alternatives to one another. This book provides a comprehensive examination of all the factors vitiating contractual consent from fraud, misrepresentation, non-disclosure, and mistake, to duress, undue influence, unconscionable bargains, and includes chapters on incapacity and unfairness. Finally, the book considers related topics, remedies and the philosophical foundations of the law in this area.

The book will be an invaluable reference tool for lawyers involved in contractual disputes, especially those preparing a case dealing specifically with the factors vitiating contractual consent. It will also be a useful reference for academics and postgraduate students of commercial law.

Peter MacDonald Eggers QC is an established and highly respected silk at 7KBW. He regularly appears before the Commercial Court and the Court of Appeal and in commercial and international arbitrations. He has published widely and teaches at University College London.