IL CONTRATTO NEL DIBATTITO DOTTRINALE INGLESE: LA RELATIONAL CONTRACT THEORY

The thesis focuses on the main legacy of the relational contract theory in the context of contract interpretation and its influence on contemporary scholarship. First developed in the United States, the relational contract theory has had a significant resonance within common law countries, emphasizing the importance given to “contextualism” and the “implicit dimensions” of contract, and proving to be one of the most important alternative approaches to the classical law of contracts. Whilst no equivalent doctrinal elaboration can be said to exist within civilian countries, Italian law does recognize rules on contract interpretation that indirectly, and at least partially, reflect some of the main claims of the relational contract theory. These rules, in turn, are necessarily a reflection of the underlying values of a civilian legal system as opposed to the common law ones, which opt traditionally for a view of the contractual relationship as mainly “adversarial” rather than “cooperative” in character. The study of the relational contract theory may therefore serve as a testing ground for any legal system, posing the choice between a “drastic” reform of the classical common law precepts of contract law and its underlying ethic, or the welcoming of a contextual approach which does not completely discard the current model in place.