Dr Joseph Spooner

Additional Teachers: Dr Jo Braithwaite, Professor Michael Lobban, Dr Nick Sage, Dr Paul MacMahon

This course is available on the BA in Anthropology and Law and LLB in Laws. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course is not available to General Course students.

This optional LLB course is normally available to students who have completed Law of Obligations LL104.

 

Completion of LL104 - Law of Obligations is normally a prerequisite.

Objectives:

LL202 Commercial Contracts is a study of the general principles of English law governing commercial contracts. It approaches the topic in two parts. Part 1, ‘Fundamentals of Commercial Contracting’ examines several important aspects of, or themes in, the law’s regulation of commercial contracting. The topics are chosen because of their intrinsic interest, and because of the opportunity offered for an advanced contextualised examination of contract law. This part explores topics including pre-contractual negotiations, multi-party transactions and agreed remedies. Part 2, ‘Fundamentals of Commercial Law’ examines core topics in commercial law, offering students an overview of the most significant areas in this field. It focuses on sales contracts; money, banking and payment methods; credit and secured transactions; agency; and assignment. The course concludes with a discussion of dispute resolution in international commercial contracts.

Topics are likely to include:

Part 1 – Fundamentals of Commercial Contracting

• The formation of commercial contracts and their interpretation.

• Pre-contractual duties.

• Mistakes in contracts and frustration of contracts.

• Multi-party projects (privity of contract).

• Agreed remedies.

Part 2 – Fundamentals of Commercial Law

• Agency.

• Assignment.

• Contracts for the sale of goods.

• Credit and security.

• Money, payment and payment methods.

• Commercial dispute resolution and international commercial contracting.

20 hours of lectures and 9 hours of classes in the MT. 20 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the LT. 2 hours of lectures and 1 hour of classes in the ST.

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the MT & 1 essay in the LT

For the advanced contract law portion of the course, you have the same choice of main text that you had for LL104: Chen-Wishart, Contract Law, (5th edn, OUP 2015) or McKendrick, Contract Law (12th edn, Palgrave 2017). Up-to-date casebooks include Burrows, A Casebook on Contract, (5th edn, Hart Publishing 2016) and McKendrick, Contract Law: Text, Cases and Materials (7th edn, OUP 2016).

For the commercial law topics, the main textbook is McKendrick (ed), Goode on Commercial Law (5th edn, Penguin 2017). For cases and materials, you might find useful Clarke, Hooley, Munday, Sealy, Tettenborn, and Turner, Commercial Law: Text, Cases, and Materials, (5th edn, OUP 2017). For topic overviews, you may also wish to try Burrows (ed.), English Private Law (3rd edn, OUP 2013), available online through the LSE Library website.

Exam (75%, duration: 3 hours) in the summer exam period.
Essay (25%, 2000 words) in the LT.