Understanding The Law Of Contract

Contract law like any other subject can be taught in a manner that leaves students feeling that they will never get a grip of the subject.

The teacher of any subject is under a duty to the student/s to communicate the information in such a manner that assists the student in not only understanding the subject but being able to walk away from a lecture or tutorial session having retained some of the knowledge.

Definition of a contract.

The law of contact may be understood as nothing more than an agreement between two individuals.

The student will learn a more sufisitcated definition at a later stage but for now the above definition will sufice for the purpose of an introductory understanding.

The agreement in law is expressed as an offer and an acceptance, for example if I offer my car for sale, the offer will include the make, model, colour, age, milage, and price of £3000. An acceptance of the offer, will result in a contact coming into being, I sell my car and the purchaser gives me £3000

Lack of agreement.

If the intending purchaser of the car were to respond to my offer and say, I want to buy your car but you must reduce the price, to £2500 there would not be an acceptance of my offer, and so no contract would come into being.

Now this sort of situation is very common, where negotiation over the price takes place. How does the law of contact deal with such a situation? In law the statement 'lt;b>I want to buy your car but you must reduce the price to £2500 is known as a Counter Offer. A contact will only come into being if I agree to sell my car for £2500, in which case my agreement to sell for £2500 is the acceptance of the counter offer. The law is now happy there is an offer and an acceptance, so there is agreement and thus there is a contract.

Now of course I hear you say, but is the law of contact as simple as this? The answer is of course not, but at least you have a basic understanding. The learning process continues and we discover that although we need an offer and an acceptance, that is we need an agreement, there are also other requirments that need to be learnt, so in our above example, where the intending purchaser said I want to buy your car but you must lower the price to £2500. If I said nothing there would not be a contact because there is a rule in law that silence can not amount to acceptance. There are other rules also that must be learnt. We find that if a person is not sane then they can not make a contact, a person under the age of eighteen can not make a contact. The rule we are dealing with here is known as capacity to contact. In order to have capacity the parties to a contact must be sane and eighteen or over.

During the course of your studies you will discover that there are manny rules to be learnt and many cases to be learnt that lay down those rules.

Offer, acceptance, counter offer, invitation to treat, intention to contact, capacity to contract, legality of object, all can be learnt in an understandable and easy method.

Law is not difficult, it is the disciple of law that is the hard part, by disipline I mean sacrificing time in order to read to learn to remember. Learning by heart was never inherited, that part the learning, and remembering is the duty of the student, the teacher must be able to teach, and prepare the student for the exams. It is a partnership, it requires effort on both sides, but mankind shall have that for which he he makes effort.