A remedy is specific when the plaintiff seeks to get the court to coerce the defendant into doing (or not doing) a particular thing. The word ‘coercion’ is used advisedly. The court orders the defendant to do (or not to do) the particular thing, and if the defendant refuses to comply, the court may use measures such as imprisonment, sequestration and fines to encourage compliance with its order. The two most important examples of specific relief in Australia are the decree of specific performance and the injunction. This chapter will consider specific performance, and the next chapter will consider injunctions. Specific performance relates to ordering the defendant to comply with the terms of a contract, but injunctions may be ordered across private law and beyond. Specific performance is exclusively equitable, and generally operates in relation to a common law cause of action; namely, breach of contract.

This chapter argues that, even if emerging economies actively promote hybrid procedures and workouts and they create a simplified insolvency framework for micro- and small enterprises (MSEs), ordinary insolvency proceedings will still play a significant role in the economy. On the one hand, they will serve as the primary mechanism for the reallocation of assets of nonviable medium and large enterprises (MLEs). On the other hand, formal reorganization procedures can still be relevant for viable MLEs unable to complete a workout or hybrid procedure due to the lack of trust on the debtor’s management team or the need to use some provisions exclusively available in formal insolvency proceedings. Therefore, emerging economies should make sure to improve the efficiency of their ordinary insolvency proceedings. Nonetheless, they cannot adopt the type of complex procedure heavily supervised by courts existing in countries with strong institutional environments. Instead, they should design a procedure requiring a minimum involvement of courts. The chapter explains how this goal can be achieved while enhancing the attractiveness of ordinary insolvency proceeding for debtors and creditors.

Legal technologies using AI-augmented algorithms to translate the purpose of a law into a specific legal directive can be used to produce self-driving contracts, that is, a contract which instead of relying on a human referee to fill gaps, update, or reform the provisions of the contract, uses data-driven predictive algorithms to do so instead. Self-driving contracts are not simply science fiction; not only are self-driving contracts possible, they are in fact already with us.

This chapter investigates how digitization changes the internal organization of firms. Gig economy platforms and freelancing agencies are rapidly taking over market share changing our very definition of a “firm,” whereas those who still work for traditional firms increasingly rely on virtual tools and external digital platforms to coordinate and communicate. Similarly, many of the firm’s other production activities may be outsourced to external providers, including inputs, manufacturing, assembly, logistics, marketing, and even R&D. We explore the emerging nature of the firm if much of its activities are carried out by other organizations, and pinpoint the key characteristics that determine what activities firms may want to continue in-house and which activities they can conveniently use digital markets and platforms to pursue.

This chapter responds to leading arguments about contract remedies, including the theory of efficient breach, contract interpretation, rules of disclosure (or permitting nondisclosure), consideration, and other topics in contract law. It shows how little progress the law-and-economics movement has made in understanding most areas of contract law, despite the obvious connections between contracts and economics.

Summary: Amidst high default rates, how did moneylenders recover unpaid loans? They had two options. One was to recover loans informally through private negotiations with borrowers. The other was to execute written contracts and revert to courts to enforce these contracts. This chapter analyses the history of courts as well as land laws, contract laws and credit surveys to examine the costs incurred by lenders to enforce different types of contracts in the unregulated market. Judicial proceedings were expensive in colonial India and often exceeded the size of loans. The chapter records a loan upgrading process in which lenders attached different types of contracts depending on the stage of default and reimbursed the costs of enforcing these contracts by charging higher interest rates. For small loans in high-risk areas, enforcement was through private negotiations and conditions harsh. These findings suggest an inverse relationship between transaction costs and equity in credit markets.

In most modern, wealthy societies, businessmen and women exploit the advantages that the formal legal process can afford. When transacting across the market, they draft contracts that detail contingencies and specify terms that courts will enforce. When cross-market transactions grow too expensive, they integrate vertically. Using the formal legal process, they combine the contracting parties into one unit.

Chapter five demonstrates how the ambition to preserve the past in song and stone leads to the hope of securing a stable sense of the future in the poetry of Pindar and the tragedies of Aeschylus. Here we see how the mere image of writing becomes a vehicle in epinician and tragic poetry not only for imagining systems of memorialization and justice, but also for questioning the systems thus imagined.

Over the last ten years, implicit consent has become one of the major points of contention in the debate about the propriety of class, mass and collective arbitration. The notion of implicit consent is critical to the development of large-scale arbitral proceedings because it allows multiple disputes to be heard at a single time, in a single forum, even if the relevant arbitration agreements are silent regarding the possibility of joint action by the claimants. The issue arises in the context of both international commercial arbitration and investment arbitration.

The divisive nature of the debate suggests that the controversy about implicit consent will continue so long as the discussion continues to be framed in its present terms. However, it may be possible to advance the conversation by expanding the nature of the analysis. Rather than focusing on implicit consent as a matter of treaty or contract interpretation, it might be beneficial to consider implicit consent from a systemic rather than individual perspective. This chapter therefore applies a dispute system design (DSD) analysis to the question of implicit consent. In particular, this discussion considers whether and to what extent the concept of ""regulatory litigation"" (defined herein as including both judicial and arbitral procedures) can be used to justify use of implicit consent as a means of addressing unanticipated risk, including unanticipated procedural risk.

The discussion proceeds as follows. First, Section II considers how regulatory litigation operates and why an analytical framework based on unanticipated risk might be necessary or useful in the context of large-scale arbitration. Section III then describes what constitutes unanticipated risk in disputes involving class, mass and collective injuries and how those issues affect dispute system design in international commercial and investment settings. Section IV addresses some of the criticisms of implicit consent and regulatory litigation by considering the nature of class, mass and collective claims, while Section V considers how implicit consent and regulatory litigation operate to overcome some of the special problems associated with transnational regulatory disputes. Section VI concludes the chapter with a number of forward-looking observations.

This chapter explores two key concepts in contract law. First, it identifies the parties to a contract and the rules that help in that process. In particular, the doctrines of privity and agency, which assist with determining who incurs rights and obligations under a contract, are discussed. Second, the chapter considers the terms of a contract, including how to identify, incorporate and interpret them. Specific attention is paid to the various types of contract terms and how they should be interpreted.

In an ideal world, people who enter into contracts would choose to enter the contract, and agree to its terms, because they have accurate and comprehensive information on which to base their decision. This chapter will first explain when a contract may be invalid, because one or both parties entered into the contract under some sort of misapprehension, or on the basis of misinformation. We will look at mistake (mutual mistake, unilateral mistake and common mistake) and misrepresentation. We will also briefly explain the old action ‘non est factum’ (‘not my deed’) and the remedy of rectification. Second, the chapter will explore when a contract may be invalid because of ‘unfair’ conduct by one of the parties – for example, where one party (Party A) enters an agreement because another party (Party B) subjected A to undue pressure (duress or undue influence); or because the conduct of B is so ‘unconscientious’ or the contract is able to be set aside in equity for unconscionable conduct.

This chapter focuses on what occurs when a contract is performed and brought to an end. It discusses the rules regarding performance, termination, and the resulting remedies available in the event of a breach of contract. The concepts covered in this chapter are of vital importance to contracting parties. For instance, parties may wish to know how to fulfil their contractual obligations in order to bring a contract to a natural end. Conversely, they may want to know how to get out of a contract altogether, potentially ending it early, resulting in a breach. Assessing the various remedies that are available in the event of a breach of contract will therefore assist parties in shaping their interactions with one another, as well as protect them where they are the subject of a breach.