Formation of Contracts : a Study of the Common Core of Legal Systems

This lengthy work' is the principal output to date of the General Principles of Law Project at the Cornell Law School in the United States. The purpose of this project has been to test and promote a new comparative law research method. Under this method, legal experts in a particular topic from a number of legal systems meet to compile a report indicating the similarities and differences in the ways their legal systems deal with the many detailed legal problems that comprise a general legal subject. The similarities found are considered to be the common core of those legal systems. Common core research is different from previous comparative law research. according to the authors of these volumes, both in its comprehensiveness and in its orientation to the resolutions of detailed legal problems.' Much earlier comparative research has either been restricted to a limited number of legal systems or has focused on a narrow problem without considering results reached in the systems studied to resolve closely related problems. Comparative studies which have covered a broad subject and a considerable number of legal systems have usually discussed just general matters such as the style, the sources, or the conceptual approaches taken by the legal systems considered.