"A contract is an agreement that specifies certain legally enforceable rights and obligations pertaining to two or more mutually agreeing parties. A contract typically involves the transfer of goods, services, money, or a promise to transfer any of those at a future date."
The study of the legal principles governing contracts and agreements between individuals and businesses, including formation, interpretation, and performance.
Elements of a Contract: This topic covers the essential elements required to form a valid contract such as offer, acceptance, consideration, intention to create legal relations, and capacity.
Types of Contracts: This topic covers the different types of contracts such as unilateral, bilateral, express, implied, executory, executed, simple, formal, and special contracts.
Formation of Contracts: This topic covers the ways in which contracts can be formed such as oral agreements, written agreements, and electronic agreements.
Interpretation of Contracts: This topic covers the rules for interpreting contract terms and resolving ambiguities in contracts.
Breach of Contract: This topic covers the different types of breaches of contract such as repudiation, anticipatory breach, and partial breach, along with the remedies available for each type of breach.
Performance of Contracts: This topic covers the rights and obligations of the parties to a contract in terms of performance, including when a party can terminate a contract.
Vitiating Factors: This topic covers the factors that can invalidate a contract such as mistake, misrepresentation, duress, undue influence, and illegality.
Discharge of Contracts: This topic covers the ways in which a contract can be discharged, such as by performance, agreement, frustration, and breach.
Remedies for Breach of Contract: This topic covers the different remedies available to the innocent party in the event of a breach of contract, including damages, specific performance, and injunctions.
Third Party Rights: This topic covers the circumstances in which third parties may acquire rights under a contract and the extent of those rights.
Government Contracts: These contracts are between private parties and government entities. They can involve the purchase of goods or services by the government, or the sale of goods or services to the government.
Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs): These contracts are between private companies or organizations and the government. They involve a collaboration between the private and public sectors to provide public services or infrastructure.
Construction Contracts: These contracts involve the construction of infrastructure or other facilities by private contractors on behalf of the government.
Procurement Contracts: These contracts involve the purchase of goods or services by the government from private parties. This can include bidding processes and awarding of contracts.
Real Estate Contracts: These contracts involve the sale, lease, or development of land or property owned by the government or public entities.
Intellectual Property Contracts: These contracts involve the licensing or transfer of intellectual property rights from public entities to private parties.
Employment Contracts: These contracts involve the employment of individuals by the government or public entities, and may include regulations on wages and benefits.
Grants and Subsidies: These contracts involve the provision of financial assistance from the government or public entities to private parties for specific purposes.
Public Utility Contracts: These contracts involve the provision of essential services such as water and electricity to the public by private parties under the guidance of the government.
"In the event of a breach of contract, the injured party may seek judicial remedies such as damages or rescission."
"A binding agreement between actors in international law is known as a treaty."
"Contract law, the field of the law of obligations concerned with contracts, is based on the principle that agreements must be honored."
"Like other areas of private law, contract law varies between jurisdictions. In general, contract law is exercised and governed either under common law jurisdictions, civil law jurisdictions, or mixed-law jurisdictions that combine elements of both common and civil law."
"Common law jurisdictions typically require contracts to include consideration in order to be valid."
"Civil and most mixed-law jurisdictions solely require a meeting of the minds between the parties."
"Within the overarching category of civil law jurisdictions, there are several distinct varieties of contract law with their own distinct criteria."
"The German tradition is characterized by the unique doctrine of abstraction."
"Systems based on the Napoleonic Code are characterized by their systematic distinction between different types of contracts."
"Roman-Dutch law is largely based on the writings of renaissance-era Dutch jurists and case law applying general principles of Roman law prior to the Netherlands' adoption of the Napoleonic Code."
"The UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts, published in 2016, aim to provide a general harmonized framework for international contracts...as well as a statement of common contractual principles for arbitrators and judges to apply where national laws are lacking."
"Notably, the Principles reject the doctrine of consideration, arguing that elimination of the doctrine 'bring[s] about greater certainty and reduce litigation' in international trade."
"The Principles also rejected the abstraction principle on the grounds that it and similar doctrines are 'not easily compatible with modern business perceptions and practice'."
"While tort law generally deals with private duties and obligations that exist by operation of law, and provide remedies for civil wrongs committed between individuals not in a pre-existing legal relationship, contract law provides for the creation and enforcement of duties and obligations through a prior agreement between parties."
"The emergence of quasi-contracts, quasi-torts, and quasi-delicts renders the boundary between tort and contract law somewhat uncertain."