‘“Lawful act duress” has divided opinion among contract lawyers. Some hail its utility in maintaining commercial ethics. Opponents are sceptical about moral crusades, or doubt whether duress can be satisfactorily defined without invoking “unlawfulness”. English law has charted a middle course. The Supreme Court, while confirming the doctrine’s existence, has sought to confine it within strict limits: Times Travel (UK) Ltd v Pakistan International Airlines Corporation [2021] UKSC 40, [2021] 3 WLR 727. Their Lordships disagreed over the correct containment strategy. But we doubt the long-term stability of any compromise position: ultimately the law faces a binary choice between full-fat moralism if lawful act duress is retained, and its outright abolition …’ (more)
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Jonathan Morgan, ‘The Thin End of the Wedge: Morality, Contract Law and Lawful Act Duress’, Cambridge Law Journal, volume 81, issue 1, March 2022, pp 17-20, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008197322000095. Published online by Cambridge University Press 30 May.
First posted 2022-06-01 09:15:47
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