This unit introduces students to the fundamental legal principles relating to the law of contract — principles which will serve as crucial building blocks not only for the rest of their legal studies at Top but also in their future careers. Students will be able not only to find, understand and recite specific statutory and case law principles of contract law but also to apply the law to the kinds of commercial situations they will encounter in the business world every day.

The topics considered in this unit are:

• the reaching of an agreement
• certainty and intention to be bound
• the nature and function of consideration
• privity of contract
• assignment
• statutory writing formalities in relation to contracts
• an introduction to estoppel
• part performance
• the construction of contracts
• incapacity and illegality
• vitiating factors such as misrepresentation, misleading and deceptive conduct, mistake, duress, undue influence and unconscionability
• discharge of a contract by performance or agreement
• repudiation and anticipatory breach of contract
• termination for breach of contract
• frustration; and
• remedies for breach of contract