A contract is based on the consent of the parties thereto.
The scope of such consent is not confined to a number of specifically recognized types of transactions. And the contract does not, as a rule, require compliance with any formalities for its validity. These are the three main elements characterizing our general law of contract, and it is obvious that the final and general recognition of the fact that every lawful agreement begets an action (ex nudo pacto oritur actio) was of momentous importance for the emergence of the modern concept of contract. Over the preceding pages we have tried to sketch the origin of this principle. We shall now have to consider certain of its implications.
I.
More on the topic A contract is based on the consent of the parties thereto.:
- TOWARDS A GENERAL LAW OF CONTRACT BASED ON CONSENT
- Consent as the basis of contract in modern law
- The concept, sketched in the preceding chapter, of the obligatio as being a strictly personal bond between the two parties who had concluded the contract found highly characteristic expression in the fact that Roman law did not recognize contracts in favour of third parties, (direct) agency and the cession of rights.
- Performance rendered by third parties/to third parties
- The Absence of Consent
- From coercion to consent
- So far in this chapter, we have concerned ourselves with ownership (and, related thereto, possession) as the real right that accrued to a person in respect of his own property (ius in re propria).
- ‘Quasi-contract’ is an unsatisfactory term applied to certain specific obligations which did not arise from contract or delict but were legally enforceable.
- The societas and third parties
- THE DUTIES OF THE PARTIES
- The thousands of students from all over Europe who had studied at Bologna and other Italian universities conveyed to their own countries the new legal learning based on the revived Roman law.
- Parties in civil trials
- From contract verbis to contract litteris
- The subject called �obligations' is mostly about contract and delict. There are some other heads to be considered, but the right impression is given if we say that contract and delict between them occupy about ninety per cent of the ground.
- Consensual contracts (contractus consensu) were contracts constituted by the mere agreement (consensus) of the parties.
- The history of Rome is traditionally divided into three main periods based on the dominant constitutional structure in Roman society during these three periods.
- There are different ways or organising a law of contract. That is as much as to say that there are different ways of responding to the central tasks which contract has to perform.
- If a Frenchman and a Belgian meet in Hamburg, and the one sells his car to the other for 2 000 francs, the question arises as to what currency the parties have intended: 2 000 French or Belgian francs.