History of English contract law

The history of English contract law traces back to its roots in civil law, the lex mercatoria and the Industrial Revolution. Modern English contract law is composed primarily of case law decided by the English courts following the Judicature Acts and supplemented by statutory reform. However, a significant number of legal principles were inherited from recording decisions reaching back to the aftermath of the Norman Invasion.

Civil law

Norman England

The Lex Mercatoria's reception

Slade's case (1598) 4 Co Rep 92b, 76 ER 1074 (1602) - Assumpsit
Bret against JS and his Wife (1653) Cro Eliz 756, 78 ER 987 (1600) - Assumption of responsibility
Sir Edward Coke
Lex mercatoria and the Hanseatic League
Sir John Holt (Chief Justice 1689 to 1710) and Lord Mansfield
William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England
Jeremy Bentham

Freedom of contract

Laissez faire
Faust and Christopher Marlowe, The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus (1604)
Robert Browning Pied Piper of Hamelin (1842)
Indian Contract Act 1872 (c 9)
Chitty on Contracts by Joseph Chitty, the younger (1796–1838) and called A Practical Treatise on the Law of Contracts not under Seal (1st edn 1826)
Sir William Anson and Sir Frederick Pollock
Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Common Law
Samuel Williston

Covenant

Furrer v Snelling, 1 Rolle 335, 3 Bulstrode 155, Jenk 324, case 38, Michalmass 13 Jac B R, is a contracts and property case, in English law.^[1] The case established the ratio that in covenant only damages are recoverable.^[2] A tenant entered a covenant for payment of rent of £20 per annum, for 4½ years. However, the case was brought for non-payment of £100 which the plaintiff claimed for the rent. The judge found that "in covenant damages only are to be recovered and this surplus in miscomputing shall be abated", and "where more is demanded than is due... the debt only, is to be recovered".^[1]

Modern regulation

Notes

^ ^a ^b Furrer v Snelling 145 ER 235
^ Charles Viner. A General Abridgment of Law and Equity: Alphabetically Digested. G G J and J Robinson. 1793. Volume 15. Page 403.

References

Articles

F Kessler, 'Contracts of Adhesion—Some Thoughts About Freedom of Contract (1943) 43(5) Columbia Law Review 629
MJ Horwitz, 'The historical foundations of modern contract law' (1974) 87(5) Harvard Law Review 917
AWB Simpson, 'The Horwitz Thesis and the History of Contracts' (1979) 46(3) The University of Chicago Law Review 533

Books

G Gilmore, The Death of Contract (1974)
PS Atiyah, The Rise and Fall of Freedom of Contract (Oxford 1979)
AWB Simpson, A History of the Common Law of Contract: the Rise of the Action of Assumpsit (1987)
OW Holmes, The Common Law (1881) especially lecture 7

[145ER235-1] Furrer v Snelling 145 ER 235

[2] Charles Viner. A General Abridgment of Law and Equity: Alphabetically Digested. G G J and J Robinson. 1793. Volume 15. Page 403.

[1]

[2]