Contract Law 合同法

Contract, as we will use that term, ordinarily connotes an agreement between two or more persons—not merely a shared belief, but a common understanding as to something that is to be done in the future by one or both of them. Sometimes, the term contract is used also to refer to a document—the set of papers in which such an agreement is set forth. For lawyers, contract usually is used to refer to an agreement that has legal effect; that is, it creates obligations for which some sort of legal enforcement will be available if performance is not forthcoming as promised. Thus, it will sometimes be necessary to distinguish among three elements in a transaction, each of which may be called a “contract”: (1) the agreement-in-fact between the parties, (2) the agreement-as-written (which may or may not correspond accurately to the agreement-in-fact), and (3) the set of rights and duties created by (1) and (2). Without trying at this point to state a short but comprehensive definition of law (if that were possible), it is perhaps sufficient to suggest that we will be surveying the ways in which such agreements are made and enforced in our legal system—the role of lawyers and judges in creating contracts, in deciding disputes that may arise with respect to their performance, and in fashioning appropriate remedies for their breach.
当我们使用“合同”一词的时候，通常是说它是一份存在于两方或三方之间的契约。

它不是一种简单的信任，而是通常理解为合同的一方或双方在将来要去做的某种事情。

有时候，“合同”也用来指一套包括协议的文件。

对于律师而言，合同通常是指具有法律效力的协议，即设置了一种法律义务，当某行为没有按照预先约定的那样去履行时，可以依照合同去依法强制履行。

因此，有时候，在一次交易中，区分三种不同的因素就变得非常必要，这些因素中的每个因素都可以叫做合同：（1）双方之间的事实合同（2）书面合同，它可能与事实合同不完全一致（3）基于前（1）、（2）两项中合同所产生的权利和义务。

在权利义务问题上，如果情况可以允许，我们可做到不用去努力阐明这种短少但包含法律意义的界定情况，那么它就强烈建议我们在早己设定好的合同和现行法律柜架下的去审视在（订立）创制合同中律师和法官的（角色）作用，他们会解决各方行为引发的争执以及对违约行为以恰当的形式进行补偿。

In the Anglo-American legal system, a great number of things—both tangible and intangible—are susceptible of “ownership.” A bull dozer, a diamond ring, the Empire State Building, “Gone With the Wind”—all may be the “property” of one person or group of persons, which means that the state will protect the right of the“owner” to use, enjoy, and even consume that thing, to the exclusion of all other persons. The first-year property course traditionally focuses on the detailed rules that in Anglo-American law govern the ownership of “real property” (land and the buildings on it), as well as some types of “personal” property, such as “goods” (tangible moveable property). Later you will have the opportunity to explore bodies of law relating to ownership of other, less tangible kinds of property such as copyrights, patents, shares of corporate stock, and negotiable instruments.
在英美法律体系中，很多事物—有形的和无形的—都涉及“所有权”问题。

一台推土机、一枚钻戒、帝国大厦、小说《飘》，都可能是一个人或者一些人的财产。

这意味着国家将保护所有权人对其所有物的使用、享受甚至是毁灭的权利，同时排除他人对此行为的干涉。

按照惯例，第一年的财产课程会侧重于英美法律对财产保护的详细规定，诸如土地和地上物等不动产的所有权的细化性规定。

然后，你将会学习到基本是对版权、专利权，股权，可转让票据等无形财产的所有权的法律保护。

Any society that recognizes property rights must also address the question of how it should respond when someone violates those rights. And property rights are not the only kind of individual rights that may need legal protection. Even societies that do not permit private ownership of wealth to the degree that ours does are likely to recognize the personal rights of individuals to be free from certain kinds of conduct such as the infliction of physical injury or other interferences with their individual freedom or dignity. The courses in criminal law and torts deal with different aspects of this question: Criminal law focuses on those violations of personal and property rights that society deems serious enough to be deterred by the threat of punishment for their commission (robbery, rape, and murder are obvious examples); tort law considers what remedy should be made available to the individuals so injured. Because of the nature of the conduct regulated, criminal law and tort law overlap to a great degree, but they are not congruent. Many acts are criminal but not tortious, because they are offenses not against individuals but against the state—treason, for example, or tax evasion; others, such as slander, may be tortious but not criminal.
任何社会一旦承认财产的所有权，那么它就必须解决如何处置“侵犯财产权”的问题。

财产权不是由法律简单地保护的一种个体性权利。

甚至，社会不允许财产所有权个人肆意同意他人创设某种随意侵害他人身体或其他有损他人个体自由或者尊严的行为的权利。

关于（财产权的保护）这个问题，刑法和民事侵权行为法有自己有不同的规定：刑法侧重于对个人和财产性权利不受妨害的保护，即社会认为这些犯罪行为的危险性已经严重到须以一系列刑罚惩处方可阻止的程度。

比如抢劫、强奸、谋杀都是明显的例子。

民事侵权法则认为对于个体的伤害应给予有效的赔偿。

由行为在本质上的不同，因此，刑法和民事侵权法即使有很大部分是重合的，但二者并不完全相同。

许多行为由于他们侵犯的不是个体而是国家，因此它们属于民事侵权行为而是刑事犯罪，比如，叛国罪、偷税罪；而诸如诽谤则属于民事侵权行为而非犯罪行为。

Where does contract law fit into this picture? We have noted already that our society recognizes and protects a variety of types of property and personal rights. Ownership of property ordinarily includes the right to use and consume the thing owned, but in many cases it will be more to the advantage of the owner to transfer, or “convey,” the right of ownership to some other person in exchange for something else of value (money, perhaps, or the ownership of some other property).
A piano is more valuable to one who can play it than to one who cannot, and two lots of adjoining real property may be worth much more when combined into one parcel than when held separately. Similarly, the ownership of factory machinery may be much more valuable when it is combined with a right to the work of skilled technicians and laborers, a dependable source of supply of raw materials, and licenses to use patented processes in the manufacturing of goods. Agreements for exchange are the means by which such resources are assembled and put to productive use. Some such agreements call for the immediate and simultaneous exchange of money for goods or services (your purchase of a morning newspaper, for instance, or of a hamburger or a haircut). Where exchanges of any significant size are concerned, however, it is much more common for both the planning and the performance to be spread over a considerable period of time. The law of contracts is our society’s legal mechanism for protecting the expectations that arise from the making of agreements for the future exchange of various types of performance, such as the conveyance of property (tangible and intangible), the performance of services, and the payment of money.
在上述情况下，合同法是如何运用的呢？我们已经注意到我们的社会已经承认并保护一系列的人身性和财产性权利。

最初的财产所有权，包括使用和消耗自有物的权利，但通过许多判例，它发展为所在权人有交易或转让的权利，对于交换中的许多人来说，这种所有权具有更高的价值，它可能是金钱，也可能是其他财产的所有权。

一架钢琴对于会演奏它的人来说，价值要远高于那些不会弹奏的人；两个相邻的不动产，可能比两个彼此独立的不动产捆绑销售更有价值。

同样地，当一家机器工厂拥有一群可以工作的技师和工人，有独立可靠的原材料供应渠道和加工产品时所需的专利许可的时候，它的所有权的价值要更高。

为交换而订立的合同，意味着它可以集中并大量的被使用。

这种合同数量巨大，要求在购买货物或者服务的时候，即时支付合同规定的价钱，比如买早报、汉堡包或者去理发。

然而，进行那些重要的买卖合同的时候，合同通常会规定双方将在未来相当长的一段时间里要去履行的行为和计划。

为了保护基于合同的约定而在未来的时候，任何一方都履行自己合同义务的可期待性，合同法己成为我们社会对此予以调整的法律途径。

比如转让有形和无形的财产、提供服务行为、支付报酬。

Before proceeding to examine contract law in more detail, we should point out here that our description of the relationship between the various “substantive” bodies of law that you will be encountering this year is necessarily an oversimplified one. Legal problems do not always fit neatly into the pigeonholes that legal theorists have created; frequently they raise issues involving more than one body of law. For instance, you will learn in this course that some types of conduct that we call “fraud” can constitute both a breach of contract and a tort. Lease agreements between landlord and tenant have historically been governed by rules of property law, but recently courts have tended to analyze their legal effect more in the manner traditionally applied to contracts. The web of the law may not be quite as seamless as the old saying would have it, but students and teachers alike must beware of falling into the trap of believing that our various legal categories are ironclad and unchanging; they are not.
在更加细致地学习合同法之前，这里我们应指出必须先要弄清楚今年你们能遇到的不同的实体法之间的关系，这种关系有时候被描述的过于简单化。

法律问题并不总是很巧合地按照法律体系调整的类别来发生，有一些法律问题通常须由几个部门法共同来解决。

例如，在课程里将会学到有多种欺诈行为合同法和侵权行为法都会调整到。

传统上，地主与佃户之间出租土地契约的法律效力由财产法规则调整，但近年来，法院更倾向于使用传统意义上的合同法来分析他们的法律效力。

法谚有云：“法网致密，无有疏漏”，尽管这种情况从来不会出现。

可是，研习法律的老师和学生都应该小心不要陷入一个错误思维的窠臼：我们不同类型的法律都是坚不可破且永恒不变的，实际上它们并不这样。

B. The Sources of Contact Law
B．合同法的渊源
Having presented our general definition of contract law, we next face the question: Where is this law to be found? From what sources—what “authority”—do courts derive the rules of law they apply to decide contract disputes? The types of authority we will consider fall generally into two categories: primary and secondary. Primary authority, commonly viewed by lawyers and judges as “the law” itself, consists of prior judicial decisions (which collectively make up what we call the “common law”) and statutes, ordinances, and the like (expressions of the will of a duly constituted legislative body on a subject within its proper sphere of action). Secondary authority
might be very loosely defined as anything else that could appropriately influence a court; the examples we will consider, however, consist mainly of the two principal types of persuasive authority that have had marked influence on the common law of contract: commentary by legal scholars and the American Law Institute’s Restatements of the Law.
上面已经分析过合同法的概念了，那接下来，我们就要解决“合同法的法律渊源”这个问题。

法院是依据什么情况权力和什么授权来制定他们的所争论的合同法的规则呢？我们认为，有关合同法的效力渊源通常有两个：首要法律渊源和次要法律渊源。

律师和法官通常认为首要法源是法律本身，它包括判例法（也就是把案例判决集中起来，我们称之为普通法的法律）和制定法和条例，以及相类似的适用规则，诸如基于某份裁定而合理地根据某种目的阐述某个部门法的作用范围的规则。

次要法源，也许像任何事情一样，很难准确地定义它对法院的影响，我们认为，次要法源包括两种具有劝导性法源，即法学家评论和美国法学会出版的《法律重述汇编》，他们对普通法中的合同法已经产生了深深地影响。

With one important exception, the bulk of our contract law is common law—judge-made law, rules distilled from a composite of court decisions in prior cases. Thus, one of your principal tasks this year will be to learn how to read, understand and apply judicial decisions. You will find at first that they seem to be written in a foreign language,; like any technical jargon, legal language is full of strange words that are familiar but appear to be used with an unfamiliar or specialized meaning (like consideration and offer)
作为一个重要的例外情况，合同法在很大程度上是由法官制定出来的普通法，这部法律的许多规则是法官们对先前的判决进行提炼和概括后而制定的。

因此，今年你们的首要任务之一是学会如何读、理解和阐述适用法院的裁决。

你一开始就会发现，这些法律像是以一种外语的形式写下来的，诸如技术术语。

法律语言充满了奇怪的词语，像“要求赔偿违法行为所造成的损失诉讼”和“无合同规定时，按照合理价格支付”，同时，它们具有不同的含义，且并不相似（比如对价、要约）。

1. Judicial Opinions
1. 司法意见书
Our judicial system of decision-making is commonly said to be one of “stare decisis”—adherence to past decisions, or “precedents.” A precedent is a prior decision with facts sufficiently similar to the case “sub judice”—under adjudication—that the court feels obliged to follow it and to render a similar decision. A regime of law based primarily on precedent is commonly justified on two grounds. First, it offers a high degree of predictability of decision, enabling those who so desire to order their affairs in accordance with ascertainable rules of law. Second, it puts a rein on what might otherwise be the natural proclivity of judges to decide cases on the basis of prejudice, personal emotion, or other factors that we might regard as improper grounds for decision. Such a system also will obviously have the characteristic—which may sometimes be a virtue, sometimes a defect—of being static and conservative, generally oriented toward preservation of the status quo.
我们目前的判决法律体系是通常被称之为“遵循先例原则”的体系，它是对先前的判决或决定的坚持。

先例是一种先前的决定，它有与将要做出判决案件相似的案件事实，法院认为必须迫使自己去遵守并提出与之相似的裁决。

以判例为主要依据的法律制度通常从两个方面证明其合理性。

第一，要求欲判决案件与先例在本质上具有高度一致性，法官据此去查明欲判决
案件将适用的法律。

第二，要求对法官个人对某些案件的癖好、个人情感因素以及其他我们可以看作是对决的有个人倾向的因素上加以控制。

这种情况下的法律体系具有明显的特征：有时侯是非常有效的，有时侯是失败的。

这些源于法律体系的稳定与保守，通常有助于法律令状的持续稳定。

There will be times, however, when a common law judge concludes that blind adherence to precedent would produce an unjust result in the case presented for decision. There are a number of ways such a result may be avoided. To begin with, a precedent is considered to be “binding” on a court only if it was decided by that same court or by an appellate court of higher rank in the same jurisdiction. Other precedents—from lower courts or from other jurisdictions—are said to be merely“persuasive.” If a precedent of the latter type is in f act unpersuasive, the judge is free to disregard it. If the precedent is not merely persuasive, but binding, it cannot simply be ignored. It may, however, be avoided: If the facts of the present case do not include a fact that appears to have been necessar y (“material”) to the earlier decision, the court may “distinguish” the precedent and render a different decision. If the earlier precedent is indeed binding, but is difficult or impossible to distinguish, there is one other way to avoid its effect: If the court of decision is the one that created the precedent (or is a higher court), it can simply “overrule” the earlier decision. (This does not retroactively change the outcome for the parties to that earlier case, but it does change the rule for the case under decision and subsequent similar cases.) Overruling is considered a relatively drastic action and is usually reserved for instances in which the court feels that the rule established by the earlier precedent is simply wrong, that is, unjust in its general application because either it was ill conceived at the outset or it has been outmoded by later developments.
然而，有时候一个判例法法官盲从一个先例判决会对在审案件造成不公平的结果。

实际上，有很多方法可以避免这种情况的出现。

一个先例是否是失去效力，通常由作出它的法院或是这个法院的上级法院来认定。

而在其他情况下，对于下级法院或其他无管辖权的法院对此只能做劝诱性的结论。

在后一种情况下，这个先例实际上不具有“约束性”，法官就可以不考虑他而自由裁判。

如果先例不仅是建议性的，而且是无效的，它就不能被简单地忽略掉。

而是可以被省略掉，排除在法官的考虑范畴之外。

如果目前的预判案件与先例不具有本质上的一致性或必要性，法院会把这个案件与先例区别开来，做出不同的判决如果判例己处于事实上的无效，尽管这很难并且不太可能区分，仍有一个别外的一种方法使之无效。

如果欲判决法院是做出判例的法院或是其上级法院，那就很简单地宣布这个先例无效。

宣布判例无效并不对这个判例中诉讼双方的权利义务产生回溯性的改变，它只是改变了欲判决案件所适用的裁判规则。

宣布无效被认为是一种严格的行为，法院通常在认为判例所建立的规则是非常错误地时候才适用。

比如，“不公正”通常可以理解为“一开始被错误的表达”或者“因后来发展而过时废弃了”。

Historically, contact law developed in the Anglo-American system as common law, rather than by statute. Until this century, the most notable exception to this historical pattern was the “statute of frauds,” which was enacted first in England and subsequently in virtually every American state. This statute requires certain contracts to be evidenced by a signed writing in order to be enforceable in court. As we shall see, the statue of frauds has itself become so overlaid by court decisions that it has more of the quality of common law than of a modern statute. By and large, however, such revisions are rare; even today contract law remains
essentially a common law system, except as it is being affected by a remarkable modern statute, the Uniform Commercial Code.
事实上，合同法发端于英裔美国人制定的普通法而非制定法。

直到本世纪，这一法律传统最著名的例外就是“反欺诈行为法”的制定，它首先制定于英格兰，然后，在美国各州都适用。

这部法律规定：合同一经签订就具有法院强制执行力的效果。

就像我们看到的这部“反欺诈行为法”法典本身己经因法院的判决而失去了原有的制定法的特色，这意味着它具有比现代意义上的制定法具有更多的普通法的特色。

但总体而言，即使到了今天，除了受到现代著名的具有里程碑式的《美国统一商法典》的影响外，以这种方式修改合同法仍然是很少见的。

2. Statutory Law
制定法
When a court decides a case governed by a statute, its reasoning differs from that used when common law principles are applied. Any court, even the highest court of the jurisdiction, is bound to follow the provisions of a valid statute that apply to the dispute before it. This duty stems from a fundamental political tenet of our society: The legislature has ultimate lawmaking power so long as it acts within the bounds of its constitutional authority. Thus, the legislature may if it wishes modify or eliminate any of the rules of common law. Sometimes, of course, the language of a statute may be subject to differing interpretations; in such cases, courts ordinarily seek to ascertain the legislature’s purpose in enacting it, in order to adopt a construction that will best effectuate that purpose. Sometimes there is “legislative history”—legislative debates, committee reports, and the like—which sheds light on that purpose.
在决定适用某部法律来裁决某个案件的时候，法院会探寻各普通法法律原则的各自不同适用问题。

任何法院，即使是联邦最高法院，都会按照现行有效法律的规定范围去适用这部法律。

这种适用义务源于当今社会的一个基本的政治信条，即在宪法授权的范围内制定法律，立法机关享有最终的立法权。

因此，立法机关可以根据它的意图变更或废止任何普通法的条款。

当然，有时候法律用语会有多种理解，这种情况下，法院为使法律发挥更好的效果，通常会探寻最符合立法机关立法时的意图。

有时候，立法史资料包括立法资料，大会报告等等，都可以用来说明立法意图。

In 1923, the American Law Institute (ALI) was formed. The major project undertaken by this organization was the preparation and promulgation of what purported to be accurate and authoritative summaries of the rules of common law in various fields, including contracts, torts, and property. The first such “Restatement” to be issued—and perhaps the most successful in terms of acceptance and use by the bench and bar—was the Restatement of Contracts, officially adopted by the ALI in 1932. (It had been gradually emerging in draft form over the several years preceding.) The Restatement resembled a statute in form, consisting of “black-letter” statements of the“general rule” (or, where the cases appeared to conflict, the “better rule”). In addition, most sections were supported with at least some commentary and illustrations. None of the ALI Restatements have the force of law, as does a statute or an individual court decision. Although they constitute only secondary authority, the Restatements have in fact proved to be remarkably persuasive; not infrequently, a court will justify its decision by simply citing and quoting (perhaps with approving discussion) the Restatement’s rule on a given point.
1923年，美国法学会成立。

这个组织的最重要的科研项目是对诸如合同法、侵权法、财产
法在内的各种领域的普通法规则的权威和真实目的进行论证和确立。

这种《法律重述》于1932年由美国法学会正式出版，并最成功地被法官和律师届所引用。

但在1932年之前的几年里，它的雏形文本就己经面世了。

《法律重述》像一部法律，“黑体字”代表基本原则，或者对某个最佳原则抵触的案例。

另外，大多数章节至少都有法学家评论和注释作为论据支持。

对于任何一个法官或者法院而言，美国司法协会出版的任何一部《法律重述》都没有法律强制力。

尽管对各部门法的《法律重述》仅仅是本部门法的次要法源，但是事实上《法律重述》有着相当显著的说服力，经常有法院为了论证某个问题的公正性，就直接引用和援引《法律重述》的原文或者是相关观点的适用规则。

Recognizing that contract law had undergone substantial development since 1932, the ALI in 1962 began to prepare a revised version of its Restatement. Finally adopted in full in 1979, the Restatement (Second) of Contracts reflects some shifts in philosophy from the original Restatement. The first Restatement tended to emphasize generalization and predictability, at the expense of diversity and flexibility; the second attempts, with more extended supporting commentary and editorial notes, to acknowledge some of the complexity the first Restatement preferred to ignore and to suggest a freer rein for judicial discretion.
自1932年《法律重述》出版以来，合同法体系己经发生了实质性的发展，美国司法协会从1962年开始准备对《法律重述》进行修订。

最终，此修订于1979年完成。

《法律重述（二版）》更换了许多《一版》中裁决所依据的哲学原则模式。

在损害多样性和不确定性问题上，《法律重述（一版）》往往强调规则的普遍适用性和可预测性。

而《二版》则试图辅以评论和编者按，去证明《一版》中宁愿忽略对这些问题的复杂性的讨论，以及试图去建议对自由裁量权的必要限制。

Although they are no more than secondary authority, the Restatements of Contracts have clearly had a powerful effect in shaping judicial views of what the common law of contract ought to be. Perhaps no other secondary authority has had quite that impact on the law, but over the years a variety of published articles, books, and multivolume treatises has been devoted to analyzing, evaluating, and synthesizing the immense body of contract cases that has accumulated in the reported decisions of American courts. Authors of these works have sought to clarify the law, to propose solutions for unresolved issues, and in some cases to argue strenuously and often effectively for legal change. In the aggregate, such commentary has been extremely influential in shaping the course of the common law of contract.
尽管《法律重述》是次要法源，但《法律重述》中有关合同法的部分己经实实在在的影响到法官如何认识普通法中合同法的应有含义。

或许没有其他次要法源可以对法律产生如此的影响，但纵观这几年来出版的各种书籍、文章、条约汇编，他们己经开始对美国法院判例集中公布的浩繁的合同案例进行分析、评价，综合归纳。

这些著作的作者们着意探究法律的本意，对未决案件提出判决建议，对某些案件中的问题展开热烈的讨论。

综上，这种（类型的）法律评论己经对普通法中的合同法的形成进程产生了决定性的影响。