Mindy Chen-Wishart
Reader in Contract Law
Mindy Chen-Wishart is a Lecturer in the Law Faculty and a Tutorial Fellow in Law at Merton College. She has taught law since 1985. Until 1992, she was a Senior Lecturer at Otago University in New Zealand. She then spent two years as the Rhodes Visiting Research Fellow at St. Hilda's College before taking up her current position. She teaches Contract, Restitution, Torts and Constitutional Law (and has previously also taught Administrative Law, Consumer Protection Law and Introduction to Law). She is involved in graduate teaching in Restitution and supervises graduate students working in topics in the law of Contract and Restitution.
Publications
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2013
M Chen-Wishart, 'Legal Transplant and Undue Influence: Lost in Translation or a Working Misunderstanding' (2013) 62 International and Comparative Law Quarterly (forthcoming) [...]
Is legal transplant possible? The stark bipolarity of a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer attracted by such a question is much less interesting and revealing than the question: what shapes the life of legal transplants? The answer to the latter question is contingent on a wide range of variables triggered by the particular transplant; the result can occupy any point along the spectrum from faithful replication to outright rejection. This case study of the transplant of the English doctrine of undue influence into Singaporean law asks why the Singaporean courts have applied the doctrine in family guarantee cases to such divergent effect, when they profess to apply the same law. The answer requires an examination of the relationship between law and society, and between the formal and informal legal orders of the originating and the recipient society.
ISBN: 0020-5893
M Chen-Wishart and U Magnus, 'Termination, Price Reduction and Damages' in S Vogenaur, G Dannemann (eds), The Common European Sales Law and its Interaction with English and German Law (Oxford University Press 2013) (forthcoming)
2012
M Chen-Wishart, Contract Law (4th ed, Oxford University Press 2012)
2011
M Chen-Wishart, 'The Purposes and Methods of English Contract Law' (2011) 12 Peking University Law Review 681
2010
M Chen-Wishart, 'A Bird in the Hand: Consideration and One-Sided Contract Modifications' in AS Burrows, E Peel (eds), Contract Formation and Parties (Oxford University Press 2010) [...]
If we accept that a bird in the hand is the worth two in the bush then the idea that the receipt of performance (even part performance) confers a benefit over and above the right to performance, and can be exchanged for something from the recipient, is consistent with the core idea of the consideration doctrine. All that remains is to replace the bilateral contract analysis in Williams v Roffey with a unilateral contract analysis (the promisor is only bound if the stipulated performance is actually received). This is preferable to three recently mooted alternatives to consideration as the primary test of enforceability: (i) the test of serious intention subject to contrary policies advanced in Antons Trawling v Smith; (ii) the version of promissory estoppel advanced in Collier v Wright, and (iii) leaving it all to the vitiating factors advocated in Gay Choon Ing v Loh Sze Ti Terence Peter.
ISBN: 9780199583706
M Chen-Wishart, 'Transparency and Fairness in Bank Charges' (2010) 126 Law Quarterly Review 157 [Case Note]
2009
M Chen-Wishart, 'Objectivity and Mistake: the Oxymoron of Smith v Hughes' in J Neyers, R Bronough, SGA Pitel (eds), Exploring Contract Law (Hart 2009) [...]
The author explores the contours of the ?objective test of intentions? and concludes that Smith v Hughes and other ?mistake of terms? cases said to represent exceptional subjectivity trumping the objective approach are straightforward applications of objectivity; there is no need, indeed no room, for resort to subjectivity. Further, stabilizing the language of ?mistake,? ?defective consent,? and ?void? allows vital distinctions to be drawn between contract formation and vitiation which explains why known non-correspondence of any term prevents contract formation, while mistaken assumptions must be shared and fundamental to void a contract. It also allows us to map the related areas of rectification, non est factum, mistaken identity and misrepresentation.
ISBN: 9781841139067
