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Thèses

Unilateralism and Contract Law

Lê-COMBY Véronique

Directeur de thèse : Françoise Labarthe

Description of the doctoral dissertation

The Unilateralism notion has recently appeared under Contract Law which, by reason of the predominance of the parties consent, does not, in principle, admit that a unilateral will may impose upon another. However, today, this notion does not meet anymore the same resistance with regard to recent case law, e.g. unilateral price setting for master agreements, unilateral termination of a contract in case of gross misconduct. After a review of them, it appears that even though manifestations of unilateralism cases are various under Contract Law, no clear definition of Unilateralism may be extracted from these cases. Therefore, it has been necessary to take inspiration from the definition provided by International Law to develop a definition of Unilateralism which is specific to Contract Law and enable to have a better control of it. Unilateralism may be defined as the behaviour of a contracting party who acts on his own, in the course of a contract, making his interests prevailing on his co-contractor’s interests who cannot set himself against that. Not only Unilateralism may be controlled through the Contract Law classical tools, but its control may also be improved with an arrangement of the notion of abuse of process. The appearance of this new notion is not without questionning as to its theoritical value. Therefore, the theoritical foundation of Unilateralism must be searched out before identifying its contribution to the General Theory of Contract.

Some informations about the doctoral

Email

veronique.le-comby@laposte.net

Academic titles

  • Doctorat en droit, Université Paris-Sud, 2009
  • CAPA