Oxford Law Alumni: Meet the Dean

A talk by Dean of the Faculty of Law Mindy Chen-Wishart.

Synopsis

Contrary to orthodoxy, good faith is no stranger to common law. Properly understood, we have been “speaking prose all our lives without knowing it”. The debate over whether to introduce a doctrine of good faith is therefore misconceived—the horse has bolted; the stable door has opened. Rather, the salient questions are: (i) How can a good faith requirement be justified? (ii) What role should it play in the evolution of contract law? (iii) What does it require? and (iv) How can we start to taxonomize its demands?

Good faith is a threefold attitude of honesty, fair dealing and fidelity to the contractual purpose that is constitutive of the activity of contracting. This is manifest in many contract law rules that apply with different intensity and effect to four identifiable categories of contracts. This is good faith “3 by 4”. Open recognition of this humble version of good faith will: make explicit the implicit ethical content of the common law of contract, enhance our understanding and organization of many apparently disparate rules, legitimize these rules and facilitate legal development in a manner consistent with common law incrementalism. This leaves open the policy questions of how far and how fast common law should travel along the road of good faith.

In this webinar, Professor Mindy Chen-Wishart, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford, Mindy discusses her latest research addressing the place of good faith in common law.