The Limits of Contract

This essay provides a framework for determining which legal rules are contract law rules — and so for determining which rules are illuminated by contract law principles and, at the same time, which rules help us to better understand those principles. The essay focuses in particular on contract law’s ‘vertical’ border — the neglected border between contract law and the general part of the law of obligations — and argues that much of what is commonly thought to belong to contract law (especially by common law lawyers) is part of the general law.