Contract law is a component of civil law that concerns the legal principles governing the exchange of goods or services between individuals or businesses. At its heart, contract law involves how legally enforceable promises are formed and executed.
A promise is a declaration by a legal person (called the promisor) to perform or forbear from performing specified act(s). The recipient of the promise (called the promisee), upon a promise being made, has rights to expect (and often to demand) that the promise be performed. Whether these rights to expect and demand performance are moral or legal rights depends on whether the promise was made in the context of a valid and enforceable contract. Only if the legal requirements of a contract are satisfied, or if other legal remedies are available, will a promise be enforceable in a court of law.
The law of contracts provides a means of distinguishing between types of promises that create moral obligation (e.g., a promise to meet a friend for coffee) and those that also create legal obligation (e.g., a promise to your bank to pay the mortgage acquired on your home).
Within the United States, there are two major sources of domestic contract law: the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) and the common law. Depending on the subject matter of the contract, such as if the contract involves the purchase of tangible personal property ("goods") or the hiring of an individual for employment ("services"), one will look to specific sources of law to determine whether the legal promise is enforceable.
Contracts for the sale of goods are governed by Article 2 of the UCC. Most contracts that are not for the sale of goods—such as contracts for employment, real property, insurance, and so forth—are governed by the common law, which is generally summarized in the Restatement of Contracts (Restatement).
Once one identifies the applicable source of the contract law—that is, whether the contract is governed by the common law or by the UCC—then, one can determine if the particular promise is valid and enforceable under the applicable rules contained in that source of law. Although the UCC and the common law do overlap, there are many key differences between the two sources of law as regards many areas of contract law, including the formation and performance of a contract, the requirements for breach of a contract, the enforceability of a contract, and the remedies available for the victim of a breach.
The legal enforceability of a particular promise thus hinges on the rules contained in the relevant source of law that are applicable to the subject matter of that particular promise. The promise is, in many ways, the cornerstone of societal order. As stated by distinguished jurist Roscoe Pound, the "social order rests upon the stability and predictability of conduct, of which keeping promises is a large item" (Pound, 1959). Contract law provides the mechanism for determining when a promise is valid and enforceable in a court of law.
References
Pound, R. (1959). Jurisprudence (Vol. 3). Saint Paul, MN: West Publishing Co.
Check Your Knowledge
Resources
Licenses and Attributions
Business Law: An Introduction, by TheBusinessProfessor.com, Jason M. Gordon & Colleagues has been adapted with permission from Jason M. Gordon. © Business Professor, LLC.
The video What is a Contract? has been adapted with permission from Jason M. Gordon. © 2016, Business Professor, Inc
The video Influential Sources of Contract Law has been adapted with permission from Jason M. Gordon. © 2016, Business Professor, Inc.