Contract

Contract, in the simplest definition, a promise enforceable by law. The promise may be to do something or to refrain from doing something. The making of a contract requires the mutual assent of two or more persons, one of them ordinarily making an offer and another accepting. If one of the parties fails to keep the promise, the other is entitled to legal redress. The law of contracts considers such questions as whether a contract exists, what the meaning of it is, whether a contract has been broken, and what compensation is due the injured party.

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Legal text of a loan contract, 99 bce; Greek Papyrus 586 in the John Rylands University Library, University of Manchester, England.

Courtesy of The John Rylands University Library of Manchester

Contract law is the product of a business civilization. It will not be found, in any significant degree, in noncommercial societies. Most primitive societies have other ways of enforcing the commitments of individuals; for example, through ties of kinship or by the authority of religion. In an economy based on barter, most transactions are self-enforcing because the transaction is complete on both sides at the same moment. Problems may arise if the goods exchanged are later found to be defective, but these problems will be handled through property law—with its penalties for taking or spoiling the property of another—rather than through contract law.

Even when transactions do not take the form of barter, noncommercial societies continue to work with notions of property rather than of promise. In early forms of credit transactions, kinship ties secured the debt, as when a tribe or a community gave hostages until the debt was paid. Other forms of security took the form of pledging land or pawning an individual into “debt slavery.” Some credit arrangements were essentially self-enforcing: livestock, for example, might be entrusted to caretakers who received for their services a fixed percentage of the offspring. In other cases—constructing a hut, clearing a field, or building a boat—enforcement of the promise to pay was more difficult but still was based on concepts of property. In other words, the claim for payment was based not on the existence of a bargain or promise but on the unjust detention of another’s money or goods. When workers sought to obtain their wages, the tendency was to argue in terms of their right to the product of their labour.

A true law of contracts—that is, of enforceable promises—implies the development of a market economy. Where a commitment’s value is not seen to vary with time, ideas of property and injury are adequate and there will be no enforcement of an agreement if neither party has performed, since in property terms no wrong has been done. In a market economy, on the other hand, a person may seek a commitment today to guard against a change in value tomorrow; the person obtaining such a commitment feels harmed by a failure to honour it to the extent that the market value differs from the agreed price.

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Justinian I, detail of a mosaic, 6th century; in the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna

Alinari—Giraudon/Art Resource, New York

The Roman law of contracts, as found in the Byzantine emperor Justinian’s law books of the 6th century ce, reflected a long economic, social, and legal evolution. It recognized various types of contracts and agreements, some of them enforceable, others not. A good deal of legal history turns upon the classifications and distinctions of the Roman law. Only at its final stage of development did Roman law enforce, in general terms, informal executory contracts—that is, agreements to be carried out after they were made. This stage of development was lost with the breakup of the Western Empire. As western Europe declined from an urbanized commercial society into a localized agrarian society, the Roman courts and administrators were replaced by relatively weak and imperfect institutions.

The rebirth and development of contract law was a part of the economic, political, and intellectual renaissance of western Europe. It was everywhere accompanied by a commercial revival and the rise of national authority. Both in England and on the Continent, the customary arrangements were found to be unsuited to the commercial and industrial societies that were emerging. The informal agreement, so necessary for trade and commerce in market economies, was not enforceable at law. The economic life of England and the Continent flowed, even after a trading economy began to develop, within the legal framework of the formal contract and of the half-executed transaction (that is, a transaction already fully performed on one side). Neither in continental Europe nor in England was the task of developing a law of contracts an easy one. Ultimately, both legal systems succeeded in producing what was needed: a body of contract doctrine by which ordinary business agreements, involving a future exchange of values, could be made enforceable.

The new contract law began to grow up throughout Europe through the practices of merchants; these were at first outside the legal order and could not be upheld in courts of law. Merchants developed informal and flexible practices appropriate for active commercial life. By the 13th century, merchants’ courts had been established at the international trade fairs. The merchant courts provided expeditious procedures and prompt justice and were administered by men who were themselves merchants and thus fully aware of mercantile problems and customs.

In the 12th and 13th centuries the development of the law of contracts on the Continent and in England began to diverge. In England the common law of contracts developed pragmatically through the courts. On the Continent the process was very different, with speculative and systematic thinkers playing a much larger role.