11 THE ITALIAN LAW JOURNAL NO. 2 (2025)

 

Corrective Justice in Contract Law: A Comparative Law Analysis

by Larry A. DiMatteo and Jan Halberda

An overlooked element of contract law is the importance of corrective justice principles in maintaining its credibility. The civil and common laws possess flexible principles under the guise of numerous names such as abuse of right in civil law and estoppel in common law, as well as the duty of good faith in various degrees in both legal traditions. Despite semantic differences, as well as degrees of application, these contract law systems use such principles to provide courts with discretion to prevent injustice when contract law rules are strictly applied. The article concludes that principles of contract wedded to notions of corrective justice will continue to be needed in order to maintain the relevancy of contract law in the era of complex contracts, long-term relational contracts, and due to the acceleration of technology. Contractual justice or fairness will remain, often covertly, a core ingredient of contract law. This article shows the workings of this part of contract law, whether in common or civil law. It brings the use of general justice-based principles out into the open to show that contract law not only provides the tools that facilitate the formation of contracts (freedom) but also has something to say about the content of contracts through the exercise of contractual rights in a just or fair way.

DOI 10.23815/2421-2156.ITALJ           ISSN 2421-2156

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