CONTRACT (contraho, to draw together).—A voluntary agreement involving mutual obligations.
Viewed ethically, the obligation to fulfil a contract is the same with that to fulfil a promise (Aristotle, Rhet., I. 10; Eth. N., v. 2, 13). The framing and fulfilling of contracts have in all countries been made the object of positive law. The consideration of the various kinds and conditions of contracts thus belongs to Jurisprudence. In Roman law a distinction was made between parts or agreements entered into without any cause or consideration antecedent, present or future, and pacts which were entered into for a cause or consideration, that is, containing a υνάλλαγμα, or bargain, or a quid pro quo—in which one party came under obligation to give or do something, on account of something being done or given by the other party.
| Agreements of the latter kind were properly contracts, while those of the former were called bare pacts. A pactum nudum, or bare pact, was so called because it was not clothed with the circumstances of mutual advantage, and was not a valid agreement in the eye of the Roman law. Nuda pactio obligationem non facit. It is the same in English law, in which a contract is defined as «the agreement of several persons in a concurrent declaration of intention, whereby their legal relations are determined» (cf. Maine’s Ancient Law, ch. IX.).— V. STATUS. |
