English And European Perspectives On Contract And Commercial Law

The purpose of this book is to honour the influential and wide-ranging work of Professor Hugh Beale. It contains essays by twenty-five very distinguished authors, each of whom has worked with Professor Beale as a co-author, as a teaching colleague, during his time as Law Commissioner of England and Wales, or as part of the study groups working in Europe on contract and commercial law. The essays reflect different aspects of Professor Beale's interests. Some concentrate on English contract law, either from a historical or a current perspective, while others are focused on aspects of European contract law. There are four essays looking at current issues relating to security and financing, and, as befits a former Law Commissioner, three essays on law reform. The essays in the final section discuss trends in transnational and European commercial law. This book brings together the reflections of eminent writers from all over Europe on important issues facing contract and commercial law and will be of interest to all scholars and practitioners working in these areas.

The purpose of this book is to honour the influential and wide-ranging work of Professor Hugh Beale. It contains essays by twenty-five very distinguished authors, each of whom has worked with Professor Beale as a co-author, as a teaching colleague, during his time as Law Commissioner of England and Wales, or as part of the study groups working in Europe on contract and commercial law. The essays reflect different aspects of Professor Beale's interests. Some concentrate on English contract law, either from a historical or a current perspective, while others are focused on aspects of European contract law. There are four essays looking at current issues relating to security and financing, and, as befits a former Law Commissioner, three essays on law reform. The essays in the final section discuss trends in transnational and European commercial law. This book brings together the reflections of eminent writers from all over Europe on important issues facing contract and commercial law and will be of interest to all scholars and practitioners working in these areas.

Part I. The Role of Consent: 1. Transatlantic perspectives: fundamental themes and debates Larry A. DiMatteo, Qi Zhou and Séverine Saintier 2. Competing theories of contract: an emerging consensus? Martin A. Hogg 3. Contracts, courts and the construction of consent Tom W. Joo 4. Are mortgage contracts promises? Curtis Bridgeman Part II. Normative Views of Contract: 5. Naturalistic contract Peter A. Alces 6. Contract in a networked world Roger Brownsword 7. Contract, transactions, and equity T.T. Arvind Part III. Contract Design and Good Faith: 8. Reasonability in contract design Nancy S. Kim 9. Managing change in uncertain times: relational view of good faith Zoe Ollerenshaw Part IV. Implied Terms and Interpretation: 10. Implied terms in English contract law Richard Austen-Baker 11. Contract interpretation: judicial rule, not party choice Juliet Kostritsky Part V. Policing Contracting Behavior: 12. The paradox of the French method of calculating the compensation of commercial agents and the importance of conceptualising the remedial scheme under Directive 86/653 Séverine Saintier 13. Unconscionability in American contract law Chuck Knapp 14. Unfair terms in comparative perspective: software contracts Jean Braucher 15. (D)CFR initiative and consumer unfair terms Mel Kenny Part VI. Misrepresentation, Breach and Remedies: 16. Remedies for misrepresentation: an integrated system David Capper 17. Re-examining damages for fraudulent misrepresentation James Devenney 18. Remedies for documentary breaches: English law and the CISG Djakhongir Saidov Part VII. Harmonizing Contract Law: 19. Harmonisation European contract law: default and mandatory rules Qi Zhou 20. Harmonization and its discontents: a critique of the transaction cost argument for a European contract law David Campbell and Roger Halson 21. Europeanisation of contract law and the proposed common European sales law Hector MacQueen 22. Harmonization of international sales law Larry A. DiMatteo.

This book explores commercial contract law in scholarship and legal practice, suggests new research agendas and provides a forum for debate of typical issues that might benefit from further attention by scholarship and legislatures. The authors from over ten different jurisdictions take an international and comparative approach. Not confined to EU law it re-opens the debate internationally and seeks to reclaim the wider meaning of European law as rooted in geography and cultural legal heritage. There is a need to focus on commercial contracts in more detail in research and legislation. The transactional approach, the role of recent law reform, including the new French Civil Code, cross-border dealings, substantive contract law in public international law and ICSID arbitration as well as current contractual practices like OEM, CSR, contractual co-operation, sustainability and intra-corporate arbitration contribute to a wider regulatory outlook for commercial transactions.

This comprehensive Research Handbook examines the continuum between private ordering and state regulation in the lex mercatoria, highlighting constancy and change in this dynamic and evolving system in order to offer an in-depth discussion of international commercial contract law. International scholars from a range of jurisdictions and legal cultures across Africa, North America and Europe, dissect a plethora of contract types, including sale, insurance, shipping, credit, negotiable instruments and agency against the backdrop of key legal regimes commonly chosen in international agreements.

Critically examines moral-promissory, economic and socio-legal perspectives on contract law, arguing that it should be formal and minimalistic by design.

Bringing together leading commercial and contract law scholars from the United Kingdom and United States, Comparative Contract Law: British and American Perspectives offers an insightful and comprehensive assessment of the commonalities and divergences in the contract law of these two jurisdictions. Approaching the subject area from a variety of perspectives - doctrinal analysis, behavioral analysis, law and economics, and theoretical - the book examines familiar areas of contract law as practiced in the UK and US. Topics include contract theory and structure; contract formation and defects of consent; policing contracts and the duty of good faith; contract interpretation; damages; speciality contracts; and legal reform. The volume provides a thorough assessment of the current state of commercial contract law in the UK and US, and addresses the strengths and weaknesses of the national and European approaches to many issues of contract law. In particular it focuses on how commercial contract law should be improved, and whether harmonization of the different contract law regimes is a suitable, and appropriate, solution.

Exploring the advantages and disadvantages of codifying contract law, this book considers the question from the perspectives of both civil and common law systems, referring in detail to issues of international and consumer law. With contributions from leading international scholars, the chapters present a range of opinions on the virtues of codification, encouraging further debate on this topic. The book commences with a discussion on the internationalization imperative for codification of contract law. It then turns to regional issues, exploring first codification attempts in the European Union and Japan, and then issues relevant to codification in the common law jurisdictions of Australia, New Zealand and the United States. The collection concludes with two chapters which consider the need to draw upon both private and comparative international law perspectives to inform any codification reforms. This book will be of interest to international and comparative contract law academics, as well as regulators and policy-makers.

Economic change, globalisation and harmonisation of European Law have brought new challenges to contract law. The contributions in this Volume by prominent legal scholars deal with current trends and perspectives in European and International Contract Law and their impact on the various domestic legal systems. The Compendium provides an analysis of new developments in formation of contract, performance and remedies, consumer contract law and the particularly controversial area of anti-discrimination law. Experts in their field examine the underlying legal principles and problems arising in legal practice in Common Law and Civil Law. The essays written in English, German and French are the product of a series of lectures held in 2006 at the Centre for European Private Law (CEP) at the University of Münster, Germany. The contributing authors are: John Adams, Hugh Beale, Giuditta Cordero-Moss, Barbara Dauner-Lieb, Michele Graziadei, Thomas Gutmann, Geraint Howells, Simon James, Paul Lagarde, Matthias Lehmann, Peter Møgelvang-Hansen, Salvatore Patti, Thomas Pfeiffer, John C. Reitz, Judith Rochfeld, Martin Schmidt-Kessel, Jürgen Schmidt-Räntsch, Alessandro Somma, Stefano Troiano, Christian Twigg-Flesner, Antoni Vaquer Aloy and Fryderyk Zoll.