02260130 - Comparative Contract Law

The course introduces students to some important similarities and differences in several basic principles of contract law in France and in the US.  Similarities include:

• Shared Western European historical development;
• Mutual manifestation of assent as the foundation of contractual obligation; and
• Free will as the basis of contract law.
• Differences include:
  • Divergent historical development of English common law and continental Civil Law;
  • Different meanings assigned to the term “unilateral contract” in each system;
  • Cause versus consideration;
  • Common law notion of reliance/estoppel;
  • Civil law notion of good faith; and
  • Treatment of contracts of adhesion.

Reading materials include selected academic commentaries on comparative contract law, US judicial decisions, and US Restatement of Contracts and UCC Sections, as well as English translations of the French Civil Code.

In class, ideas will be introduced, applied during class discussion and then applied to written practice exam problems.  By the end of the course, students should be able to:

• Recognize the impact of historical and cultural differences on modern American and French contract law;
• Distinguish contract law doctrines that are substantially similar in both American and French contract law from those that differ significantly;
• Write a case brief of an American judicial decision and apply the holding of that case to a hypothetical fact pattern in order to state a legal outcome;
• Identify some of the economic and political forces supporting and opposing harmonization of contract law across national borders and between regions; and
• Relate differences in private law regimes such as contract law to larger questions of the global competitiveness of national economies.

3 credits or 1.5 US credits