Page 99 - Encyclopedia Of World History

creation myths 449

Death is the universal salt of states; Blood is the base of all
things—law and war. • Philip James Bailey (1816–1902)

for absolute freedom to enter into contracts, in practice to the ‘law’ a contract itself brings into existence” (Fuller
this only applied to citizens of the polis. In the seven- 1969, 14).Thus, for the historian, contract law can yield
teenth century, English jurists began to emphasize the important information about culture, ideology, society,
concepts of “consideration” and the “bargain,” which, and economics and a valuable point of inquiry into the
although similar to the Roman concept of causa, dif- past.
fered in that English common law generally did not con-
Douglas B. Palmer
sider either the ends of a contract nor the status of the
parties involved. Instead, English law concentrated on
the bargaining between parties from which a considera- Further Reading
tion, an act or promise by which one party acts in con- Atiyah, P.S. (1995). An introduction to the law of contract. Oxford, UK:
sideration of a reciprocal action, creates a binding agree- Clarendon Press.
Berman, H.J. (1986). The religious sources of general contract law: An
ment. English common law also developed the doctrine
historical perspective. The Journal of Law and Religion, 4(1), 103–
of “strict-liability,” which placed an absolute binding 124.
obligation on the parties regardless of the reason for Berman, H.J. (2003). Law and revolution:Vol. 2.The impact of the Protes-
tant Reformations on the Western legal tradition. Cambridge, MA: Har-
nonperformance. In Paradine v. Jane (1647), a lessee vard University Press.
was still bound to pay rent to his landlord, although the Fuller, L.L. (1969). Human interaction and the law. The American Jour-
nal of Jurisprudence, 14(1), 1–36.
defendant’s lands and crops had been destroyed during
Gordley, J. (1991). The philosophical origins of modern contract doctrine.
the English Civil War, because the court ruled that con- Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.
tracts are entered into freely by the parties involved.This Hansen,V. (1995). Negotiating daily life in traditional China: How ordi-
nary people used contracts, 600–1400. New Haven, CT: Yale Uni-
seemingly harsh measure, however, has been undeniably versity Press.
important in the development of commerce and trade by Macaulay, S. (1963). Non-contractual relations in business: A preliminary
study. The American Sociological Review, 28(1), 55–67.
making negotiable instruments, such as letters of credit,
Maine, H. (1917). Ancient law. London: J.M. Dent.
checks, and bills of exchange (all of which are essentially Versteeg, R. (2002). Law in the ancient world. Durham, NC: Carolina
contracts which promise future payments), a more effi- Academic Press.
Watson, A. (1995). The spirit of Roman law. Athens: University of Geor-
cacious way of transferring large sums of money, because gia Press.
no matter how many parties that negotiable instrument Zweigert, K., & Kötz, H. (1987). Introduction to comparative law:Vol. 2.
The institutions of private law. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.
has passed, the recipient could expect payment because
“strict liability” still bound the original issuer to the orig-
inal contract.

Historians and Corvée Labor
Contract Law
The intricacies and formalities of contracts and contract See Labor Systems, Coercive
law have often been imposing to the point that many his-
torians have disregarded contract law as a subject of
inquiry. However, contract law, even in its most formal
expressions, reflects the historical context in which the Creation Myths
law was created, or contract disputes adjudicated. More-
over, as the American legal scholar Lon L. Fuller observed, reation myths are stories, or collections of stories,
contract law is not only the positive law of contracts, but Cthat tell of the origins of all things: of communities
an expression of customary law, and thus“contract law. . . and landscapes, of the earth, its animals and plants, of the
refers primarily, not to the law of or about contracts, but stars, and of everything that exists. They represent what