P. S. Atiyah

Essays on contract

The modern role of contract law contracts, promises and the law of obligations Holmes and the theory of contract Fuller and the theory of contract form and substance in contract law the liberal theory of contract executory contracts, expectation damages and the economic analysis of contract consideration - a restatement judicial techniques and the law of contract misrepresentation, warranty and Estoppel contract and fair exchange freedom of contract and the New Right.

Medical Malpractice and the Contract/Tort Boundary

No British observer could hope to penetrate in full the complexities of American health-care provision and its relation to the medical malpractice problem; whatever the deficiencies of the British National Health Service, its financial and administrative structure is simplicity itself compared to that operating in the United States, and the chief characteristic of the British malpractice problem is that there is no problem.2 I take it, therefore, that my function as an English legal scholar in this symposium is not to add my own uninformed comments to the already superabundant literature on the American malpractice problem and how to reform the system, but rather to provide a detached overview of the major new American reform proposal under discussion. This proposal-to shift the control of much of the physician/patient relationship3 from tort to contract-raises some broad issues about purposes and methodology which are addressed in this article. The article begins by asking some very general questions about the nature of the distinction between contract and tort; it then asks whether the preference being expressed by many participants in this symposium for contract over tort4 is merely a preference for a legal tool, a legal methodology, designed to achieve a desired result, or whether this preference does in fact derive from any essential distinctions between contract and tort, irrespective of outcomes. The article concludes by asking why some American reformers think that private contractual means are a better way to change malpractice rules and