There are at least five prominent accounts of the fundamental principles of customary contract law. The first, and the most famous, holds that contract law imposes the basic moral duty to keep promises. A related, albeit different, point of view presents contract law as the fulfillment of the obligation not to harm others. A third party sees the law not as the fulfillment of the parties' non-legal duties, but as the promotion of efficient investments and exchanges.
A partnership with economic theory gives this approach a leading role in legal scholarship that exceeds the philosophical attention it has received. A fourth position emphasizes that contracts establish a distinctive relationship between the parties to them and base contractual obligations on the value of acting jointly and cooperatively with others. A fifth position is pluralistic and proposes that contract law has many fundamental objectives that do not need to be satisfactory as a whole or even coherent. These competing views can be evaluated along several dimensions, including “conforming to real doctrine,” success in justifying the law, and internal coherence.
Judicial Education Center1 University of New MexicoAlbuquerque, NM 87131-0001. The first step a small business owner should consider is legal capacity. Most states require all parties to be at least 18 years old before they can enter into a contract. All parties must have the mental capacity to understand the terms of the contract and the consequences for breach. A person who is intoxicated, under the influence of drugs, or coerced to sign can request that the contract be annulled in court.
The person representing the company must have the authority to sign the contract and force the company to comply with the agreement. This first part examines general contract theories that take the central characteristics of common law as an explanatory starting point. In another version, the value of the contractual relationship lies in the transfer of rights, completed at the time of contract formation. Once the offer is accepted and as long as the contract complies with federal and state laws, the small business owner has a contract that can now be enforced in court.
This characteristic of contract law distinguishes it from civil liability law, where the corrective objective is to a large extent to restore a status quo ante disturbed by an evil. The companies on which the economic approach focuses are therefore mere instruments of shareholders who, to the extent that they own (or could own) diversified portfolios, are in a more or less identical situation with respect to each transaction that contract law may regulate. Unless the existing contract says so, there are no formal requirements that must be met for the amendment to constitute a binding contract. From a harm-based point of view, contract law is analogous to liability law, an example of a broader class of regulations that enforce damage-based obligations.
The second part of this post explores issues in the philosophy of language (on meaning and interpretation), the philosophy of action (the metaphysics of intention) and moral and political philosophy (freedom and distributive justice) as they arise in contract law. If a small business owner enters into a contract with terms that are too favorable and the consideration is inadequate or not indicated, the court could decide that the payment is actually a gift and make the terms of the contract unenforceable. In other words, a type of startup in which the law generates performance expectations that it considers a reason for execution is essential in the contract. A surprising result is that nothing in the intrinsic nature of contract law favors obligation based on promises or chosen; instead, everything depends on contingent facts about which legal forms coordinate mutual trust in the most “efficient” way or that maximizes well-being.
A promise or set of promises for which failure to comply with the law remedies, or whose fulfillment the law in any way recognizes as a duty. More specifically, the contract develops liability for misrepresentation, including not only fraud, but also negligent misrepresentation, especially to the extent that analogous doctrines in tort law appear artificially locked in. . .
