Volume VII: Contracts in General | Chapter 2 (1997): Contract in Pre-Commercial Societies and in Western History

Completed in January 1995

James Gordley

A. The Nature of Personalized Contract Law

1. Introduction – Discrete and personalized transactions. – In Western contract law, the reference point for determining the obligations of the parties is a discrete transaction between them, i.e. the contract. Anthropologists have described such transact…