Writing Service-Contract law to safety the demands of electronic contracts
Contract law is a specialized area of the law with a body of rules governing the formation
and enforcement of contracts. These rules will vary depending on the subject matter of the
contract and other things. Regardless, it is fundamentally true that the formation of a legally
recognized contract requires an offer, acceptance, and consideration. There must be a
meeting of the minds in order to form a contract. Some contracts, depending on their
subject matter, are governed by specialized areas of contract law that address the specific
needs of certain bargaining relationships. This is particularly true of commercial contracts,
or contracts dealing with the purchase and sale of commercial goods by merchants. Not all
contracts take place between parties within the United States. Outside the domestic arena,
the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods may
apply to the sale of goods between international parties. There is no special or uniform law
governing “electronic contracts”. Yet, electronic contracts place certain constrains upon
existing contract law and create the potential for problems in applying existing traditional
contract law to electronic commerce. The new problem for courts facing electronic
contract issues is becoming clear. On the one hand, a unique “law of electronic contracts”
appears to be unnecessary and redundant, given the wealth of traditional contract law that
exists, since fundamentally, the purposes of general contract law continue to apply to
electronic transactions, and it appears unnecessary to reinvent contract law to achieve an
identical result possible under current law. A specialized law of electronic contracts would
add little to the existing law. On the other hand, the very nature of electronic contracts
presents certain issues and questions that cannot be resolved entirely through the
application of traditional contract law. Develop a testable hypothesis for resolving this
dilemma between traditional contract law and electronic contracts.
