The Sanctity of Contracts in English Law - College of Social ...

The Moral Basis of Contract 3historical, another commercial or economic and thethird equitable.Our early common law had no general theory ofcontract in the sense that, provided they satisfiedcertain legal tests, promises or agreements generallyshould be enforceable by the courts. All that it hadwas a system of writs designed to protect rightsderiving from a few transactions giving rise to whatwe would now describe as contractual, but which werethen regarded as proprietary, interests. When inthe fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries theKing's courts of common law were evolving new andmore general remedies for breaches of contracts, anall-important new departure consisted in the extensionof an " action on the case " 4 to cover instances ofnon-feasance—in less technical language, when a writbecame available against a promisor who had madea binding promise and never performed it. Thepromisor had by his deceit in undertaking to dosomething for another and then failing to carry outhis promise caused injury to that other (generallyknown to lawyers as the " promisee"), for whichinjury the promisee was entitled to recover damages.This form of action on the case, which ultimatelybecame the normal remedy for breaches of contractgenerally, was evolved as a method of redressing thedamage suffered by a promisee who had been disappointedby the failure of his promisor to redeemhis promise.4See on this generally, Pluoknett, Concise HistoryCommon Law, 5th ed., pp. 372-373, 637 et seq.of the