Implicit Dimensions of Contract: Discrete, Relational, and Network Contracts

This collection of essays, derived from an international workshop, explores the significance of implicit understandings and tacit expectations of the parties to different kinds of contractual agreements, ranging from simple discrete transactions to long-term associational agreements such as those formed in companies. An interdisciplinary and comparative approach is used to investigate how the law comprehends and gives effect to the these implicit dimensions of contracts. The significance of this enquiry is found not only in relation to the interpretation of contracts in many different contexts, but more fundamentally in how social practices involved in making contracts should be analysed and comprehended.

David Campbell is Professor of International Business Law at the University of Leeds.

Hugh Collins is the Cassel Professor of Commercial Law at the London School of Economics, and Emeritus Vinerian Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford, UK. Previous books include Justice in Dismissal, Marxism and Law, Employment Law 2nd edn, Human Rights at Work (with Bogg, Davies, and Mantouvalou), Labour Law 3rd edn (with Ewing and McColgan), and Philosophical Foundations of Labour Law (ed with Lester and Mantouvalou).

Photo courtesy of Faculty of Law, University of Oxford.

Christian Joerges was Professor of Law and Society at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, and Co-Director of the Centre of European Law and Politics at the University of Bremen.

John Wightman is a Lecturer and Head of Kent Law School, Canterbury.

Gunther Teubner is Professor Emeritus of Private Law and Legal Sociology at the Faculty of Law, Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Germany.