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

72 A Comparison and Conclusionsprecedent will not be unsettled overnight, for certaintyand uniformity are gains not lightly to be sacrificed.Above all is this true when honest men have shapedtheir conduct upon the faith of the pronouncement."But as social and economic changes tend now totake place with much greater rapidity than formerly,the comparatively static machinery of law does notseem to be so apt for the adjustment of the rights ofcitizens. It is not only the ever-changing needs andcircumstances of our society but also the complexsituations which it provides that call here and therefor some modifications of the older machinery. Ihave seen no better observation on this complexitythan one recently made by Professor C. F. Carter, 8of Manchester: " The purposes of economic policy arecontradictory, so that only in rare cases is it possibleto make one thing better without making anotherworse. The main instruments of economic managementturn out to be weak or to have undesirableside-effects."One suggested explanation of the restrictions on thefreedom of contract apparent in the last hundredyears is that collectivism curtails, as surely as individualismextends, the area of contractual freedom. 9This is seen more clearly perhaps in the field oflegislation than in the decisions of the courts. Forexample, much of the law governing the relation oflandlords and tenants is now statutory and the partiesare expressly forbidden to contract out of these8 In an article entitled " Can We Control the Economy? "District Bank Review, Dec, 1958, at p. 17.9 Koscoe Pound, Interpretation of Legal History, p. 264.