Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
BOOK REVIEW - A RESTATEMENT OF THE ENGLISH LAW OF CONTRACT
Robert Turner
CONTRACT RULES: DECODING ENGLISH LAW. Neil Andrews, Professor of Civil Justice and Private Law, Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge. Intersentia,Cambridge (2016) xlvi and 392 pp, plus 3 pp Appendix and 10 pp Index. Hardback £93. Softback (student edn) £9
A RESTATEMENT OF THE ENGLISH LAW OF CONTRACT. AS Burrows, DCL, QC, FBA, Professor of the Laws of England, Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford. OUP, Oxford (2016) xx and 260 pp, plus 16 pp Index. Hardback £75; paperback £30.
The English law of contract is almost entirely precedent-based and might be thought incapable of being codified in any logical form, yet it remains the law of choice for many commercial contracts worldwide and thus needs to be clearly understood and appreciated by all. That two leading academics should have attempted to achieve a codification and publish the results almost simultaneously is both remarkable and beneficial.
Professor Burrows’ approach has been to seek the assistance of some 30 leading lawyers and judges—though freely admitting that some of them may disagree with his final analysis (would that we might have known who said what). This was the approach he adopted when he wrote his widely acclaimed Restatement of the Law of Unjust Enrichment. In marked contrast, Professor Andrews, acting alone, has written a succinct statement of English contract law and as such this work is an impressive magnum opus.
Both authors set out their Statements, though in somewhat different formats. Burrows has set out his Restatement in eight Parts containing 50 statements, while Andrews has divided his Statement into 24 Parts of 198 Articles, though that does not mean that the latter is longer, as the former contains numerous sub-paragraphs to each statement.
Both address basically the same audience of practitioners, judiciary, academics and students. Burrows cautions that the non-lawyer will need a degree of legal knowledge. Andrews expresses the hope that, making his Statement neither too detailed nor too thin, it will be of use to a wide audience of lawyers and judges, businessmen, public officials, jurists, students and ordinary people both within and outside the Common Law jurisdictions—and as such encourage the adoption of English common law as the law of choice in the world of economic business.
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