1. See www.baili.org. Whilst by no means perfect, the BAILI website compiles updated legislation, caselaw and legal commentary from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth and provides access to a range of other ‘World resources'.
2. As Gilmore notes, classical contract was ‘an ivory tower of abstraction’ whose ‘natural habitat was the law schools, not the law courts', Gilmore, G., The Death of Contract, p. 18., Ohio State University Press, 1974.
3. Gordley, J., op cit., p. 160–1, who suggests that having failed to retain these earlier concepts they were unable to make their ‘will theory’ work.
4. As Cornish and Clark note, the common law courts renounced their ‘earlier willingness to rectify elements of unfairness in bargains and instead insisted upon enforcing whatever terms had been agreed'. The common law support for a severely individualistic conception of freedom of contract contrasted with the courts of equity, which constituted ‘a protective jurisdiction of conscience', ibid, at p.203. Evidently, as Horwitz notes, the role of the courts of equity had greatly diminished.
5. In the nineteenth century, freedom of contract was regarded by many philosophers, economists and judges as an end in itself, finding its philosophical justification in the ‘will theory’ of contract and its economic justification in laissez-faire liberalism. Chitty on Contracts, pp.5 et seq., 27th ed., Vol. I, General Principles, London, 1994. Caselaw in modern times reveals judicial recognition that the operation of an absolutist analysis of freedom of contract cannot be justified and that the doctrine has been reduced to a ‘general principle', see for example Suisse Atlantique Société d'Armement Maritime SA v NV Rotter dams che Kolen Centrale [1967] 1 AC 361, 399 and Photo Production Limited v Securicor Transport [1980] AC 827, 848.