Legal technologies using AI-augmented algorithms to translate the purpose of a law into a specific legal directive can be used to produce self-driving contracts, that is, a contract which instead of relying on a human referee to fill gaps, update, or reform the provisions of the contract, uses data-driven predictive algorithms to do so instead. Self-driving contracts are not simply science fiction; not only are self-driving contracts possible, they are in fact already with us.

AI has the potential to overcome problems concerning the existing approaches to contract drafting, management and implementation, whilst also having the potential to exacerbate these problems. To deal with this risk and to create AI which is trustworthy in relation to contracting, such systems require channelling in a new direction, termed ‘transactional responsibility’. Legal regulation must be structured around the entirety of the socio-technical system which underpins AI.

This chapter responds to leading arguments about contract remedies, including the theory of efficient breach, contract interpretation, rules of disclosure (or permitting nondisclosure), consideration, and other topics in contract law. It shows how little progress the law-and-economics movement has made in understanding most areas of contract law, despite the obvious connections between contracts and economics.

This chapter aims to identify and analyze Western influences – French, German and English – that played into the conception of contractual consent emanating from the PRC CC provisions on contracts. Looking to the Chinese treatment of contract formation, contract interpretation, mistake as to present or future facts, good faith and abuse of rights, contractual fairness in the context of standard form contracts and some aspects of contract remedies, it is determined that the Chinese code provisions on contract on the whole clearly motion to a continental (French/German) rather than English model, the only exception perhaps being with respect to the duty to inform, which the Chinese code refrains from explicitly endorsing. As between French and German influences, moreover, the PRC CC seems more heavily suffused with the latter, it coming closest to French law only with respect to mistake as to present facts and certain aspects of good faith – at least insofar as the Chinese conception of delictual liability can be analogized to the French, which remains to be seen.

This chapter explores why Swiss law is very frequently chosen as the law applicable to international commercial contracts. This chapter reviews the statistics of the ICC and the Swiss Arbitration Centre as well as surveys carried out of international commercial actors confirming that Swiss law is one of the most popular laws chosen to govern the parties’ contract. This chapter then goes on to analyse the reasons cited for the popularity of Swiss law as the law governing the parties’ contract, namely the parties’ freedom to agree on the rights and obligations in their contractual relationship, the perceived neutrality of Swiss contract law, the suitability of Swiss law to cross-cultural relationships, its commonalities with laws of several Civil law jurisdictions, namely French and German law, the fact that the Swiss Code of Obligations is concise and easily accessible and the attractiveness of Switzerland as a seat of arbitration.

Our penultimate chapter explores the extent to which the Tudor period saw a legal renaissance. It examines developments in the common law courts but also explores the development of new conciliar courts outside the common law, most notably star chamber and the court of equity, which were to prove influential. It also examines the further rise in the use and importance of statute law in this period, demonstrating that the Reformation statutes that split England from the Roman Catholic Church underscored the power of Parliamentary statute. Attention is also given to some developments in the common law courts during this period concerning the law of obligations (the development of the principle of consideration in contract law), property law (the development of the writ of ejectment that replaced the older land law writs and the origins of the law of trusts) and criminal law (the development of the distinction between murder and manslaughter).

This chapter completes our examination of the long Plantagenet period, which culminated in the bloody War of the Roses. However, as the chapter title makes plain, the focus is on the impact that the deadly plague of this period had upon law and order. The chapter explores the different interpretations made of the importance of the Black Death and surveys developments of this period such as the origins of what we would today call employment law, significant increases in the effectiveness of the administration of justice chiefly through increased powers for justices of the peace and important developments in both law of obligations (exploring how actions on the case developed from the writ of trespass and how it further developed into the action on the case for assumpsit) and the criminal law (focusing on treason and murder).

The title of this chapter on ‘The English Justinian (c. 1272–1307)’ refers to the nickname given to Edward I who was likened to the Roman Emperor Justinian I who codified Roman law on the basis that Edward’s reign saw a significant increase in the number and importance of statutes. It falls into three sections. The first will discuss the main statutes of Edward I, focusing on the Statute of Westminster 1275, the Statute of Wales 1284 and the Statute of Westminster II 1285. The second part will examine statutes that had a particular effect upon feudalism: the Statute of Mortmain 1279 and Quia Emptores 1290 (also known as the Statute of Westminster III). The third and final section will explore a development in the common law that began before this time but blossomed in this period: the origins of what is now known as the law of obligations or the law of contract and tort (examining the writs of covenant and trespass). This underlines that, although the English Justinian is known for the growth of statute law, the era also saw the continued development of the common law.

This chapter analyzes reciprocity in the social sciences, historical forms of law, and domestic contexts, including the law of contracts and in federal States, to shed light upon some of reciprocity’s fundamental characteristics. Reciprocity is not incompatible with the existence of a community, but necessarily requires a social relation, and one of its defining characteristics is its relationship with equality. Rather than being a negative concept, based on occasional and discontinued instances of interaction on the basis of reactions to conduct, reciprocity is a concept fundamental to the existence of social relations, and inherent to ideas of justice and fairness.

This chapter sets out the main objectives and major themes of the work. The overall aim of the project is to establish the implications of a diminishing contract law (common law in particular).By ‘diminishment’ is meant the return to formal and classical law values in the common law and a reduced field of application for the rules of contract law. A brief outline is given of the topics that are explored during the course of the book: the rise of private ordering through contracts and the legal response to this; the ‘contractualisation’ of society; the formalist turn in modern contract law; the likely future pressures on legal development (such as ‘smart contracts’).The chapter raises some initial arguments concerning the drawbacks of a diminishing contract law (lack of development of public rules of contract law; lack of legal scrutiny of many modern contracts, or aspects of them; lack of opportunity for courts to express and apply the normative values that should underpin contracting). The chapter also anticipates, and responds to, some initial questions or criticisms about the project.

Food, more than any other commodity, is surrounded by a vibrant debate concerning competing modes of production, ranging from the preferability of industrial farming as against small-scale farming, to genetically modified production as against organic production and to global production as against local production. The resulting demand for food with specific material and immaterial attributes has contributed to the rise of certification schemes along the value chain. Beyond being mere information intermediaries, such certification schemes can best be understood as ‘polycentric’ governance tools that give voice to non-economic rationalities in governing global production. Put this way, certification e.g. for sustainable food production holds a mirror up to competition law theory. In dealing with such private governance initiatives, competition law finds a pertinent terrain to conceptualize and implement its own ‘polycentric’ objective of constitutionalizing markets. In particular, competition law can and should formulate guidelines to meaningfully distinguish between different private governance initiatives to critically engage with the known flaws in the incentive structure of certification.