“Until the latter part of the last century it would have been possible to assert confidently that contract law was judge-made law; and, to state the obvious, judges decide cases. So, to a large extent, the job of a lawyer in advising a client once a dispute has arisen is to predict what a judge is likely to decide. But judges’ focus is on the cases immediately before them and only peripherally on the wider implications of what their decisions might entail. Moreover, at any level of the judicial hierarchy, short of the Supreme Court, the rules of precedent constrain an individual judge’s freedom to decide a case in a way that they would like. The consequence for contract law is that it has evolved piecemeal over the centuries. Incremental changes here and there are capable of producing an unbalanced overall structure and in some cases unprincipled distinctions …” (more)
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Kim Lewison, ‘Contract Law in Practice. By Neil Andrews. [Oxford University Press, 2021. lxiii + 764 pp. Hardback £250.00. ISBN 978-0-192-89794-7.]’, Cambridge Law Journal, volume 81, issue 1, March 2022, pp 195-197, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008197322000125. Published online by Cambridge University Press 30 May.
First posted 2022-05-31 18:00:56
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