Hunter, Kate and Austen-Baker, Richard and Campbell, David (2018) An historical analysis of the voidability of contracts in the long eighteenth century : control vs. protection. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.
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Abstract
The thesis has a period of focus of the ‘long eighteenth century’. This phrase is coined from that in use by historians when discussing the period from 1688-1832 and has been chosen given the number of key contractual developments which took place in this era. The primary purpose of this research is to understand the basis and motivations behind the creation of important rules under which some contracts were made void. It is conceded that ‘voidness’ of contracts is an extremely wide area of law and as a consequence of this, three areas of contract law in particular have been chosen to be explored, these being illegality, immorality and incapacity. These three topics are linked by the way in which they concern the intervention of the law on private relationships and personal lives, which is the chosen theme throughout this thesis. Ultimately, the thesis will arrive at a point whereby the underlying motivations behind the eighteenth century legal developments which held certain contracts concerning illegality, immorality, and incapacity to be void will be discovered. The means of doing this will be to analyse and interpret the social history and the legal history concurrently. It will be determined whether these developments were underpinned by a law which sought to protect or control and thus the tension between control and protection interests will be explored throughout this thesis.