Contract as Promise: The Role of Promising in the Law of Contract. An Historical Account

Abstract

One of the most striking features of the law of obligations in Scotland is the way in which a promise seriously intended is sufficient to generate a binding obligation.1 More than three hundred years ago Viscount Stair wrote that “a promise is that which is simple and pure, and hath not implied as a condition, the acceptance of another”.2 Stair explained that, “Promises now are commonly held obligatory, the canon law having taken of the exception of the civil law, de nudo pacto”.3 This was not some abstract proposition. The Court of Session