Vanishing Contract Law
Common Law in the Age of Contracts

Examines how, despite its past significance and influence, English contract law now faces functional and moral redundancy.

Catherine Mitchell (Author)

9781316514139, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 September 2022

250 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.9 cm, 0.52 kg

English contract law provides the invisible framework that underpins and enables much contracting activity in society, yet the role of the law in policing many of our contracts now approaches vanishing point. The methods by which contracts come into existence, and notionally create binding obligations, have transformed over the past forty years. Consumers now enter into contracts through remote and automated processes on standard terms over which they have little control. This book explores the substantive weakening of the institution of contract law in a society heavily dependent on contracts. It considers significant areas of contracting activity that affect many people, but that escape serious and sustained legal scrutiny. An accessibly written and succinct account of contract law's past, present and future, it assesses the implications of a diminished contract law, and the possibilities, if any, for its revival.

1. Vanishing contract law
2. Contract common law trends
3. Contractualisation and the common law retreat
4. Private ordering, regulation and contract law
5. Contracts through the gaps
6. Future challenges for contract law
7. The possibility of common law revival
8. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Contract law [LNCJ], Company, commercial & competition law [LNC], Private international law & conflict of laws [LBG], International business [KJK]