Judges , commerce and contract law by John Gava

This question received a powerful impetus with the publication of Stewart Macaulay’s pioneering study in 1963 into the use of contract law in the market place. Macaulay looked at the contracting practices of businesses in Wisconsin and found that many entered into agreements that didn’t satisfy the requirements of contract law and would not, therefore, be enforceable in the courts – and that the parties did not seem to care about this lack of enforceability. He also found that business people used a variety of non-legal methods, primarily trust and gossip, to ensure performance of their transactions. In addition he discovered that often contracts were written up for internal bureaucratic needs such as controlling sales people or acting as records for production purposes. Indeed, he found that many business people actively disliked the law and preferred to avoid its use wherever possible.