Doctrine of consideration Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

Doctrine of consideration - Article ExampleAs a matter of positive law, the doctrine of consideration crystallized in the predominate of Elizabeth I into a number of rules which are still clearly recognizable by the modern common lawyer. First, if a person received a emolument at the hands of the 11romise for which he promised to pay, the benefit was a sufficient consideration in effect, the promise here was bought and paid for. Second, if the 11romise acted to his detriment in reliance on the promise, so that the non-fulfilment of the promise would cause him actual pecuniary loss, the detriment was a sufficient consideration. ... ions that created debts In popular etymology this was the very essence of the idea of contract, actus contra actum With the shift towards liability based on promises, at least on the surface, it was by no means obvious that the same theory should apply, and there developed an alternative locution of the criteria that marked off binding promises from no n-binding ones by the second half of the sixteenth century this had come to be known as consideration (Ibbetson, 1999, 141). In order to apprehend its nature and development, it is essential to look at it on two levels, the formal and the substantial. In formal terms, it is difficult to talk of any doctrine of consideration before about(predicate) 1560 While it seems clear that lawyers before this time had the idea that there was some additional factor that was needed to make promises binding, there was no consistent guidance of describing it The sources reveal a variety of terms consideration, causa, recompense, quid pro quo. As the action of assumpsit became established, consideration emerged as the term that described the necessary feature. At a straightforward linguistic level, consideration meant little more than reason or motive, so that the consideration for a promise can be seen as the reason for which it was made magical spell the standard definition of it found by the early seventeenth century underlines this A cause or occasion meritorious requiring mutual recompense, in fact or in law. Substantively speaking, though, such a definition of consideration seriously misrepresents its meaning (Ibbetson, 1999, 142)The earliest example of a case in which there is an express averment of consideration is Newman v. Gylbert (1549). The plaintiff declared on a payment of five shillings and also averred that the defendant