Legal Dictionary of Pakistan

freedom of contract

The doctrine that people have the right to bind themselves legally; a. judicial concept that contracts are based mutual agreement and free choice, and the. should not be hampered by external contract, such as governmental interference. ( This is, the principle that people are able to fashion their relations by private agreements, esp. as opposed to the assigned roles of the feud".' system. As Maine famously said, "[T]he movement of progressive societies has been a movement from Status to Contract." Henry Summer< < Maine, Ancient Law 165 (1864). - Also termed liberty of contract ."Like most shibboleths, that of 'freedom of contra, < rarely, if ever, received the close examination which .its importance deserved, and even today it is by no me.. , easy to say what exactly the nineteenth-century judges meant when they used this phrase. At least it may ':"said that the idea of freedom of contract embraced to closely connected, but none the less distinct, concepts ; t, the first place it indicated that contracts were based mutual agreement, while in the second place it emphasized that the creation of a contract was the result of .3 free choice unhampered by external control such ,as government or legislative interference." P.S. Atiyah : an Introduction to the Law of Contract 5 (3d ed. 198;