Unclear contracts are common, and a large number of litigated cases in the U.S. require clarification of the parties' agreement. The process of clarifying an unclear contract involves three legal tasks. A judge must first identify the terms to be interpreted, then must determine whether the terms are ambiguous and encompass the rival interpretations advanced by the parties. Finally, if the terms are ambiguous, a finder of fact must resolve the ambiguity by choosing between the rival interpretations. Performing these tasks often involves the question of what evidence may be considered. Further, the courts may decide contract interpretation issues based on the agreement's literal terms, or the parties' objective or subjective intentions.
Steven J. Burton's undertaking in Elements of Contract Interpretation is a comprehensive treatment of these issues. By identifying the concrete and legally provable elements that contract interpreters may use, he has written an invaluable resource for both practitioners and scholars alike. This book also proposes an optimal law of contract interpretation for the courts' consideration.

One party induces an assumption in the mind of another. Australian law has arguably given expression to three moral duties relating to induced assumptions: the duty to keep promises, the duty not to lie and the duty to ensure the reliability of induced assumptions. This book expounds the third of these duties and shows how it can be used to shape "equitable" estoppel, a doctrine emerging from the decisions of the High Court of Australia in Waltons Stores and Verwayen. It does not purport to cover the entire law of estoppel, but does examine, analytically, how the doctrine might operate in a series of problematic cases at the edge of contract law.

The book provides a comparative analysis of the law relating to remedies for breach of contract. It examines different remedies such as specific performance and damages,doing so from the viewpoint of different legal systems, principally the English, American, German, French and Israeli. Each essay is written by a recognised specialist in his or her own field. Topics covered include the relationship between substantive rights and contract remedies, the recent reforms of the law relating to breach of contract in Germany, the remedies in the context of a third party beneficiary and the extent to which a claimant can choose the remedy which he or she deems to be the most appropriate. The book also makes use of a range of techniques, particularly economic analysis, when examining the legal rules. The book contains an introductory essay written by the editors and an essay by Professor Friedman, which deals with the relationship between substantive rights and contract remedies.

'Restitution for wrongs', or 'restitutionary damages', is the judicial award which compels the wrongdoer to give up to the victim the benefit obtained through the perpetration of the wrong, independently of any loss suffered by the victim. The establishment of a civil trial in Roman law, which left compensation as the main response, and a widespread, loss-centred interpretation of the Aristotelian theory of corrective justice explain, but do not justify the difficulties encountered by modern attempts to account for restitutionary damages. Mistakes in the classification of this institution have complicated the picture. To overcome some of these problems, this study considers the basic structure of restitutionary damages from different angles. In part one, the topic is analysed from a comparative perspective. Although the focus remains on English law, the German, the Italian and the Roman jurisdictions provide research data which, in part two, support the development of a theory of restitution for wrongs as corrective justice.

A person can lawfully engage in an act restricted by copyright if they have the licence of the copyright owner or if their actions are covered by a statutory exception. However, if a person has the benefit of neither of these, it may still be possible to imply a copyright licence to respond to copyright infringement. In contrast to the rigidity of the statutory exceptions, implied licences are more malleable in being able to respond to a diverse set of circumstances, as the need arises. Thus, implied licences can serve as a flexible and targeted mechanism to balance competing interests, including those of the copyright owners and content users, especially in today's dynamic technological environment. However, implication as a process is contentious, and there are no established principles for implying copyright licences. The resulting uncertainty has prevented implied licences from being embraced more readily by the courts. Therefore, this book develops a methodical and transparent way of implying copyright licences, based on three sources: the consent of the copyright owner; an established custom; and state intervention to achieve policy goals. The frameworks proposed are customised separately for implying bare and contractual licences, where relevant. The book goes on to analyse the existing case law in the light of these frameworks to demonstrate how the court's reasoning can be made methodical and transparent. Underscoring the contemporary relevance of implied licences, this book tests and validates the methodology in relation to three essential and ubiquitous functions on the internet - browsing, hyperlinking, and indexing.

This book provides a solid background on various principal civil engineering contracts including the ICE 6th, the NEC2, the Arbitration and Conciliation Acts and the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1998. It also includes commentary on the ICE 7th and international contracts. The book provides a concise introduction to contract law and discusses various standard forms of contract used in civil engineering projects to provide an analysis of the various contract options.

This book is about one of the most controversial dilemmas of contract law: whether or not the unexpected change of circumstances due to the effects of financial crises may under certain conditions be taken into account. Growing interconnectedness of global economies facilitates the spread of the effects of the financial crises. Financial crises cause severe difficulties for persons to fulfill their contractual obligations. During the financial crises, performance of contractual obligations may become excessively onerous or may cause an excessive loss for one of the contracting parties and consequently destroy the contractual equilibrium and legitimate the governmental interventions. Uncomfortable economic climate leads to one of the most controversial dilemmas of the contract law: whether the binding force of the contract is absolute or not. In other words, unstable economic circumstances impose the need to devote special attention to review and perhaps to narrow the binding nature of a contract. Principle of good faith and fair dealing motivate a variety of theoretical bases in order to overcome the legal consequences of financial crises. In this book, all these theoretical bases are analyzed with special focus on the available remedies, namely renegotiation, rescission or revision and the circumstances which enables the revocation of these remedies. The book collects the 19 national reports and the general report originally presented in the session regarding the Effects of Financial Crises on the Binding Force of Contracts: Renegotiation, Rescission or Revision during the XIXth congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law, held in Vienna, July 2014.

The book provides a broad and topical perspective of the sources of modern contract law. It examines the creation of contract law as a multi-pronged occurrence that involves diverse types of normative content and various actors. The book encompasses both a classical perspective on contract law as a state-created edifice and also delves into the setting of contractual rules by non-state actors. In so doing, the volume thoroughly analyses present-day developments to make sense of shifting attitudes towards the overall regulatory paradigm of contract law and those that reshape the classic view of the sources of contract law. The latter concerns, in particular, the digitalisation of markets and growing trends towards granularisation and personalisation of rules. The book builds on the EU private law perspective as its primary point of reference. At the same time, its reach goes far beyond this domain to include in-depth analysis from the vantage points of general contract theory and comparative analysis. In so doing, it pays particular attention to theoretical foundations of sources of contract law and values that underpin them. By adopting such diversified perspectives, the book attempts to provide for a better understanding of the nature and functions of present-day contract law by capturing the multitude of social and economic dynamics that shape its normative landscape. The volume gathers a unique and distinguished group of contributors from the EU, USA and Israel. They bring research experience from various areas of private law and contribute with diverse conceptual perspectives.

The development of private law across the common law world is typically portrayed as a series of incremental steps, each one delivered as a result of judges dealing with marginally different factual circumstances presented to them for determination. This is said to be the common law method. According to this process, change might be assumed to be gradual, almost imperceptible. If this were true, however, then even Darwinian-style evolution - which is subject to major change-inducing pressures, such as the death of the dinosaurs - would seem unlikely in the law, and radical and revolutionary paradigms shifts perhaps impossible. And yet the history of the common law is to the contrary. The legal landscape is littered with quite remarkable revolutionary and evolutionary changes in the shape of the common law. The essays in this volume explore some of the highlights in this fascinating revolutionary and evolutionary development of private law. The contributors expose the nature of the changes undergone and their significance for the future direction of travel. They identify the circumstances and the contexts which might have provided an impetus for these significant changes. The essays range across all areas of private law, including contract, tort, unjust enrichment and property. No area has been immune from development. That fact itself is unsurprising, but an extended examination of the particular circumstances and contexts which delivered some of private law's most important developments has its own special significance for what it might indicate about the shape, and the shaping, of private law regimes in the future.

An historical analysis of the development and reform of the law of prior obligations as expressed in preexisting duty rule and past consideration rule. Teeven's principal focus is on the judicial rationalization of common law reforms to partially remove the bar to enforcement of promises grounded in the past. This study traces American deviations from English common law doctrine over the past two centuries in developing theories to overcome traditional impediments to recovery presented by the law of prior obligations. It also explores ideas for further reforms found buried in past case law. The growing unease with both the dashing of legitimate consensual expectations and the perceived unfairness to naive, ill-informed, and otherwise disadvantaged parties served as the impetus for liberalization of the exclusive contract bargain test. The resultant reforms adhered to the modern realist emphasis on fairness. The expansion of contractual liability to include promises looking to the past encompasses some of the most important reforms of the consideration contract since its genesis. As a consequence, contractual liability can no longer be defined solely in terms of bargain consideration since contract law now includes a broader range of promissory liability.

This book is a collection of essays examining the remedy of contract damages in the common law and under the international contract law instruments such as the Vienna Convention on Contracts for the International Sales of Goods and the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts. The essays, written by leading experts in the area, raise important and topical issues relating to the law of contract damages from both theoretical and practical perspectives. The book aims to inform readers of current developments, problems, trends and debates surrounding contract damages and reflects an ongoing dialogue on damages among representatives of common law, civil law, mixed and trans-national legal systems. The general issues addressed in the collection include the purpose and scope of damages, the measures of damages, recoverability of losses, methods of limiting damages and the assessment of damages. A special emphasis is placed on the examination of the role of gain-based damages, the meaning and definition of loss, the recoverability of damages for injury to business reputation, the recoverability of legal fees, the rules of mitigation and foreseeability, the dilemma between the 'abstract' and 'concrete' approaches to the calculation of damagesand the relationship between changes in monetary value and the assessment of damages.

Macroprudential policy focuses on the financial system as a whole, as distinct from individual institutions, and its objective is to limit the costs to the real economy from system-wide distress of the financial sector. This book offers a critical, contextual and comparative examination of the nature of macroprudential policy as an emerging legal domain. It explores why macroprudential policy is necessary and how best to design tailored legal, institutional and governance frameworks that support the various supervisory stages in macroprudential regimes. Questions addressed relate to the design of the macroprudential mandate and institutional structures, independence, transparency and accountability arrangements, the nature and limitations of macroprudential authorities' supervisory powers, as well as the challenges that are likely to be encountered during the generation, collection and analysis of data and the use of macroprudential tools. The book extends well beyond being a 'one-stop-shop' introduction on all aspects of macroprudential policy. It digs deeper and does the heavy lifting by analysing the unique features of macroprudential policy that set it apart from other policy areas; examining the pulling (and at times, contradicting) forces which affect it and surfacing its complex and evolutionary nature and the unique challenges confronting macroprudential authorities. In order to derive and capture the theoretical foundations of macroprudential policy and support the high-level suggestions made on how to operationalise it, the book draws on established scholarships from international law as well as theories developed in the Organisational Behaviour field. It presents and explains the law within the context of the most recent empirical research in economics, including research on the prevalent governance structure of macroprudential policy, its interaction with other policy areas and the effectiveness of macroprudential tools. The normative discussion in the book is also grounded in practical specificities through detailed critical analysis of macroprudential policy frameworks at the national level (UK and US), regional level (EU) and global level (FSB, IMF and BIS).

Joint Winner of the 2001 SPTL Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship! In recent years there has been enormous interest in the law of restitution,with many new books and academic articles and a number of important decisions in the courts. However, there remains great controversy and some confusion, partly for historical reasons and partly as a result of continuing differences over the principles underlying the field. There are particular difficulties over the relation of the law of restitution to other areas of law, including contract and property law. In this new and innovative work the author advances a view of the framework of fundamental principles underlying the law of restitution which offers a means of understanding the tangle of conflicting authorities, and then proceeds to examine the case law in light of it. As part of his analysis, the author suggests new approaches to understanding the areas of overlap between restitution, contract, trusts and property law.

Contract plays a vitally important role in the delivery of public services today. Both central and local governments make extensive use of private firms to provide facilities, goods, and services. Government contracts vary considerably from the relatively straightforward competitive procurement of office supplies, to complex, long-term arrangements in which the contractor researches and develops a new piece of military equipment, or builds and provides a fully-serviced hospital over a thirty-year period.

English law's traditional approach to government contracts has been to regard them as ordinary private law arrangements. As a result, they have understandably been neglected by public lawyers in both teaching and research. This book argues that, on closer inspection, constitutional and administrative law (in the form of statute, common law, and government guidance) have been playing an increasingly important role in the regulation of certain key aspects of government contracting. The book analyzes these public law elements in detail and suggests ways in which they might appropriately be developed more fully, in tandem with the underlying private law regime. The book's aim is to raise the profile of government contracts as a proper subject for public law scholarship, whilst at the same time contributing to important contemporary debates on issues such as the public vs. private divide, the scope of the judicial review jurisdiction, and the reach of the Human Rights Act 1998.

Principles of the Law of Sale and Lease sets out concisely the general principles relating to these specific contracts.

Written by experts in the field, the third edition will assist practitioners and law students alike to understand and apply the law relating to these specific contracts.

The book is organised in two parts, integrating the common-law principles as well as the recently introduced consumer protectionist statutory provisions on sale and lease.

Contents Include:

Sale
- Definition of Contract of Sale
- Sources of Law of Sale
- Contract of Sale and Transfer of Rights in Property Sold
- Requirements for a Valid Sale Contract
- Seller’s and Buyer’s Rights and Obligations
- Pre-Contractual Obligations
- Formalities, Content and Interpretation
- Seller’s and Buyer’s Residual and Statutory Obligations
- Particular Contracts of Sale

Lease
- Introduction
- Sources of Law
- Definition and Essentials of a Lease
- Duties of the Lessor
- Duties of the Lessee
- Subletting, Cession and Assignment
- Transfer of the Lessor’s Title: Huur Gaat Voor Koop
- Termination of a Lease
- Lessee’s Right to Compensation for Improvements
- Residential Lease and the Rental Housing Act 50 of 1999

This book contains the papers written for the seventh volume in the Oxford-Norton Rose Law Colloquium Series, which was held in St Hugh's College, Oxford, on 22nd-23rd September, 2006. As with past colloquia, this brought together practitioners (solicitors, barristers and Judges) and academics to examine and discuss an area of commercial law. The belief underpinning all the colloquia has been that the sharing of views on central topics of commercial law can only work to the mutual advantage of both academics and practitioners. The topic chosen this year was Contract Terms which is a topic of everyday importance to all commercial lawyers. It is also an area in which academics have become increasingly interested in recent years.
The book begins with an introduction by the editors which draws out the central features of the discussions at the colloquium. It is followed by an introductory practitioners' perspective written by Richard Calnan of Norton Rose.
The colloquium papers have then been divided into three main sections. The first on 'Construction and Interpretation' comprises the papers written by Gerard McMeel, Edwin Peel, Andrew Burrows, Robert Stevens and Stefan Vogenauer. The second on 'Legislative Control of Unfair Terms' has papers by Elizabeth MacDonald, Susan Bright and Hugh Beale. The third on 'Issues Related to Particular Types of Term' looks at entire agreement clauses, termination clauses, force majeure clauses, retention of title clauses and choice of law clauses. This third section contains chapters written by John Cartwright, Ewan McKendrick, Simon Whittaker, Louise Gullifer and Adrian Briggs.
The papers have all been written by eminent academics andtogether they provide a stimulating and up-to-date examination of Contract Terms. The book will be essential reading for all practitioners involved in drafting contracts or in commercial litigation, commercial barristers, and academics interested in contract and commercial law. The foreword has been written by the senior Law Lord, Lord Bingham of Cornhill.

Enrichment is key to understanding the law of unjust enrichment and restitution. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the concept of enrichment and its implications for restitutionary awards. Dr Lodder argues that enrichment may be characterised either factually or legally, and explores the consequences of that distinction. In factual enrichment cases, the measure of enrichment is the objective value received. This is the basis of many awards of money had and received, quantum meruit, quantum valebat and money paid. In legal enrichment cases, the benefit is the acquisition of a specific right or the release of a specific obligation. The remedy is restitution of that right or reinstatement of that obligation. It is demonstrated that specific restitution of the defendant's legal enrichment is often the basis for resulting trusts, rescission, rectification and subrogation. This book has profound implications for understanding restitutionary awards and the relationship between the enrichment inquiry and other aspects of the law of unjust enrichment, including the 'at the expense of' inquiry and the defence of change of position.

This book aims to explain the principles of contract law for the businessman, and to put those principles into their commercial context. Anyone involved in commercial transactions needs at least a basic understanding of the principles of contract law – the legal framework for all commercial activity. A lack of such a basic understanding at best results in a business which is less competitive and ultimately less profitable than it should be, and at worst can have expensive and sometimes disastrous commercial consequences.

The essays in this volume are dedicated to Gareth Jones, the retiring Downing Professor of English Law at the University of Cambridge. His contribution to legal scholarship has been immense, particularly in the fields of legal history, the law of trusts, charities law and, most famously, the law of restitution. The publication of the first edition of the Law of Restitution, which he co-authored with Lord Goff, stimulated a renaissance in the study of a subject which had previously lain dormant. The effect of its publication on English legal scholarship has been profound and enduring. In these essays, written by a group of the world's leading restitution scholars, the opportunity is taken to conduct a fresh appraisal of the development of the subject - to look, in other words, at the past, present, and future of the law of restitution. Contributors: John Baker, Peter Birks, Justice Finn, Roy Goode, Ewan McKendrick, Justice McLachlin, Sir Peter Millett, Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, Richard Nolan, Janet O'Sullivan, Graham Virgo (as well as shorter contributions from invited commentators).

It has many times been said that contracts involve assumptions of obligation or liability, but what that means, and what it is that is assumed, have not often been discussed. It is to further such discussion that some of the author's previously published writings around this subject have been brought together in this book. His basic premises are that contractual obligation and liability in this context are two sides to the same coin and that an assumption of one is an assumption of both. Parties are bound not because liability has been imposed upon them by law as a result of their having entered into a contract but because, in the act of assuming, they have imposed it upon themselves. Contract provides a facility the purpose of which is to enable this to be done within the limits prescribed by law. The implication of these premises are much more significant than might be supposed when applied to such areas of contract as formation, consideration, intention to contract, exception clauses, privity and damages. The book concludes with a treatment of the role of assumption in tort. Because of the importance of its subject matter and its wide-ranging treatment, this book should appeal not only to teachers and postgraduate students of contract but also to practitioners in the field and to anyone else with an interest in contract theory.

This book examines uniform contract law in all relevant areas of legal doctrine and practice, and considers the barriers which exist toward it in modern nation states, namely in the German and English legal systems. The author suggests ways to overcome these obstacles, and develops an autonomous methodology of interpretation of transnational contract principles. The book analyses existing uniform transnational law rules, such as the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts.

The comprehensive guide to all the essential legal and business considerations to be taken into account in structuring and negotiating technology-driven corporate alliances. Readers are provided with a clear and concise introduction to the nature and scope of the legal rights relating to new technologies and a framework for evaluating prospective business partners and for identifying the key contracting issues. An indispensable resource for consummating licensing, research and development, manufacturing and distribution, and corporate partnering arrangements, as well as managing relationships with university researchers and raising capital for research activities.

Entrepreneurs, executives, technology managers, lawyers, accountants and researchers will benefit from the step-by-step approach to each technology-driven transaction, beginning with the description of the law of technology and intellectual property; continuing with the initial investigation of the technology which is to be the subject of the transaction and the general contractual components of any transaction; and ending with the essential elements of each relationship, including permitted uses of the technology, compensation, representations and warranties, covenants, closing conditions, indemnification, and the procedures for ensuring that the technology remain a valuable asset for each party. The book covers each of the stages involved in developing, manufacturing, licensing, distributing, and financing technology-based products and will serve as an invaluable and constant resource in making sure that all of the important issues have been considered before the deal is sealed.

Because of its enormous economic power and susceptibility to corruption, public procurement - the purchase by government of goods and services - has come under increasing regulation as world trade expands. Three international leaders in public procurement law fully explain how the procurement award process must be managed to achieve its goals in global market economy. This work should educate government officials, trade lawyers, and students in how to comply with existing and emerging regulatory schemes as they: select a contractor and plan the contract, with detailed attention to terms, conditions and specifications; allow for national security, national industrial development, and environmental protection; get value for money and avoid waste of public funds; publicize contracts; combat corruption; secure successful completion of contracts; balance pressures to buy from domestic sources with the economic benefits of international competition; harness procurement power to promote social and environmental goals; enforce compliance with public procurement rules; and recognize circumstances under which discretion-based (rather than rules-based) initiatives may be more effective.

General clauses or standards (Generalklauseln, clauses generales) are legal rules which are not precisely formulated, terms and concepts which in fact do not even have a clear core. They are often applied in varying degrees in various legal systems to a rather wide range of contract cases when certain issues arise - issues such as abuse of rights, unfairness, good faith, fairness of duty or loyalty or honesty, duty of care, and other such contract terms not lending themselves readily to clear or permanent definition. Here, for the first time, is a systematic discussion of this kind of rule in the evolving and dynamic context of European contract law. A collection of twelve insightful essays by leading European law authorities, the book is based on a conference organized jointly by the Society of European Contract Law (SECOLA) and l'Association Henri Capitant, held in the 'grande salle' of the French Supreme Court in Paris in 2005. The subject is approached along three distinct but interconnected avenues: comparative contract law, in which the different models to be found among Member States - particularly the Germanic, French, and English common law systems - are explored with an eye to differences and common ground; EC contract law, in which the general clause approach has tended to focus on labour law and consumer law, and in which the European Court of Justice more and more assumes the final say; and, the European codification dimension, in which a potential instrument on the European level would compete with national laws and develop closely with them. The authors demonstrate that a focus on general clauses in contract law, embracing as it does a wide range of types of contracts, helps enormously with the necessary integration of legal scholarship and economic approaches, and of legal science and legal practice in the field. Numerous analytic references to relevant cases and EC Directives give a practical impetus to the far-reaching but immediately applicable theory presented in this important book. As European contract law continues to develop rapidly, this seminal contribution is sure to increase in value and usefulness.