Breach of contract

Acta Juridica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 37-56
Author(s):  
E Clive
Keyword(s):  
Contract Law ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Good Faith ◽  
Breach Of Contract ◽  
Fair Dealing ◽  
Legal Relationship ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Common Frame Of Reference ◽  
The Way

This contribution uses J & H Ritchie Ltd v Lloyd Ltd 2007 SC (HL) 89 as a peg on which to hang a number of fundamental questions about contract: What is a contract? Does the word ‘contract’ sometimes refer to a legal relationship rather than a juridical act? If so, does this matter? Is the law on implied terms satisfactory? Might a duty of good faith and fair dealing in contract law be a better way of dealing with certain problems than resort to the implication of terms? When is a breach of contract serious enough to justify cancellation or rescission? Should a supplier of defective goods have a right to cure the defect? Is there a risk of forgetting the difference between a right to withhold performance and a right to rescind or cancel? These questions are prompted by the fact that this was a straightforward case and similar situations must occur regularly. Yet, different judges reasoned differently and came to different conclusions in the course of the case being appealed all the way to the House of Lords. The question, therefore, is: how might a simple case have been better, or in a more straightforward way, approached through law? The contribution argues that the Draft Common Frame of Reference (the DCFR) provides both concepts and rules that would have reached the ultimate conclusion in Ritchie much more quickly and perhaps the case would not have needed to be litigated at all.

scholarly journals Critical Race Realism: Re-Claiming the Antidiscrimination Principle through the Doctrine of Good Faith in Contract Law

2005 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily M.S. Houh
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
Good Faith ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Contract Term ◽  
Breach Of Contract ◽  
Fair Dealing ◽  
Contractual Obligation ◽  
Functional Value ◽  
Constructive Conditions

This Article comprises the last leg of a larger project I have undertaken on the implied obligation of good faith in contract law. I have argued elsewhere that, as a descriptive matter, the doctrine of good faith and fair dealing in contract law, despite some theoretical controversy in the established scholarship on the doctrine, functions in contemporary contract law not as an implied contract term—as it was originally conceived—but as a rhetorical proxy for judicial analyses of material breach and constructive conditions relating to underlying breach of contract claims. While such applications of good faith have been of great functional value to courts, lawyers, and students of contract law, I have argued that these developments have caused good faith jurisprudence to languish in an impoverished state and to further detach from the doctrine’s equitable roots in implicit contractual obligation. As such, I also have argued from a critical race perspective that, as a normative matter and due to the inadequacies of civil rights remedies, good faith should be used to prohibit discriminatory conduct based on race, gender, sexual identity, age, and/or other categories of identity in the contractual context.

22. Breach of Contract and Termination

Contract Law ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewan McKendrick
Keyword(s):  
Contract Law ◽  
Good Faith ◽  
Vienna Convention ◽  
European Contract ◽  
Breach Of Contract ◽  
Anticipatory Breach ◽  
The Status ◽  
Anticipatory Breach Of Contract ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Right

This chapter begins with a definition of ‘breach of contract’ and then outlines the circumstances in which a breach of contract gives to the innocent party a right to terminate further performance of the contract. These include breach of a condition and breach of an intermediate term where the consequences of the breach are sufficiently serious. The chapter also considers the problems that can arise in deciding the status of a term which has not been classified by the parties as a condition, a warranty, or an intermediate term. It examines termination clauses and the significance attached to the good faith of the party who is alleged to have repudiated the contract. The chapter includes a brief comparison of English law with the Vienna Convention and with the Principles of European Contract Law, and also addresses the question of whether an innocent party is obligated to exercise its right to terminate further performance of the contract, and considers the loss of the right to terminate. It concludes with a discussion of the law of anticipatory breach of contract.

15. Good faith

Contract Law ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mindy Chen-Wishart
Keyword(s):  
Contract Law ◽  
Good Faith ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
General Duty ◽  
English Law ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Difference

English law does not currently recognise a general duty of good faith, but this position is increasingly being challenged. In addition, good faith informs a diverse range of legal doctrines and principles. This chapter addresses the following: the meaning of good faith; good faith in current contract law; and the nature of good faith. It further considers whether English law should recognise a general good faith doctrine and the difference this might make to various aspects of the law.

Harmonisation of European Contract Law: Citizenship, Diversity and Effectiveness

2005 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 81-99
Author(s):  
Hugh Collins
Keyword(s):  
European Commission ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
Private Law ◽  
European Law ◽  
European Contract ◽  
Common Frame Of Reference ◽  
European Contract Law ◽  
Code Civil

Proposals from the European Commission to work towards greater harmonisation of contract law, and indeed private law more generally, have been described in terms that apparently distance these plans from the introduction of a code civil europa. Nevertheless, the programme for developing ‘non-sector-specific measures’ into a ‘common frame of reference’ constitutes in its fundamentals and aspirations the ambition to create a European law of contract. And the method for the construction of this code replicates the process devising the great European codes of the nineteenth century: a painstaking scholarly endeavour to find consistency and coherence in the divergent national private law systems, except that no legislative process is foreseen.

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