Awards

• Winner of J. F. Northey Memorial Book Award 2003.
• Winner of Winner of the JF Northey Memorial Book Award 2003.

Overview

Judges and scholars routinely use concepts such as 'exploitation' in a justificatory way. In the field of contract law, a finding of exploitation may excuse a party from the normal consequences of his or her manifested contractual assent. However, the meaning of exploitation is usually assumed for this purpose, rather than elaborated. In fact, exploitation is a highly contested concept.Exploitative Contracts examines the 'essentially contestable' criteria of interpersonal exploitation claims. It puts forward a conception of exploitation: 'legal contractual exploitation', a form of wrongdoing that arises in connection with the formation of contracts. This notion is shown to underpin traditional heads of relief in contract law, including unconscionable dealing, undue influence, unilateral mistake in equity, and 'lawful act' duress.Importantly, this notion of legal contractual exploitation conforms to the intellectual and institutional forms of order presupposed by the classic liberal conception of the contract. The wrongfulness of an act of exploitation must reside in some characteristic of the processes of contract formation rather than in some quality of the impugned contract itself.The doctrines of unconscionable dealing, duress, and undue influence are examined in detail in the light of what they each reveal about the 'process' conception of legal contractual exploitation. In turn, the volume explains how an understanding of these contract law doctrines can be enhanced by a proper conception of exploitation.

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9780198260639

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Reviews

...the reader will benefit from Bigwood's guide to what is now a very large body of doctrine...this book refuses to be swamped by the amount of material it discusses. * Cambridge Law Journal *

...the reader will benefit from Bigwood's guide to what is now a very large body of doctrine...this book refuses to be swamped by the amount of material it discusses. Cambridge Law Journal

`The detail and referencing are awe-inspiring. The art of the elaborate introduction, the perceptive aside and the lengthy reminder of what has gone before, is not neglected either...The reader will find a lot more to it than just the elaboration of theory. The author is to be commended for searching out the ideas and insisting on confronting the hard questions. If I were to study this subject in depth again, it is one of the books I would most want to have beside me.' Richard Sutton, Prof. Emeritus, Faculty of Law, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, European Review of Contract Law

Author Information

Rick Bigwood joined the Faculty of Law at the University of Auckland in 1995. His main teaching responsibilities cover contract law and the law of personal property. Previously, he was a senior solicitor with the Federal Attorney-General's Department in Canberra, Australia. He has been General Editor of the New Zealand Universities Law Review and is currently Co-editor of the New Zealand Law Review.

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