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Australian Contract Law Should Be Codified

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Australia, commercially would be at an advantage if contract law was codified. The common law system which contracts calls home, can only take on so many avenues and limits itself when stretched to cover new areas. There needs to be a national set of laws governing contracts on the commercial front and in general areas to overcome discrepancies across borders. However there still remains inconsistency with consumers, minors and business trade through contracts made online. The digital economy is not only one of the fastest growing areas but is forever changing and is definitely a prospect that needs to be covered. Effective legal safeguards against undue exploitation and advantage-taking in such online dealings would see Australian …show more content…

In reality, codification is likely to be very costly and carry with it a long process of judicial review and interpretation in drafting a model, not to mention strong government support. Time is of the essence in creating such a unified framework and if not done properly, it could work against its intentions by limiting industries and trades to where it may become so stringent with no room to move, therefore creating an outlet where such industries and trades will find their own contractual resolutions. Codification or any sort of reformation needs elasticity in order to mould to areas that need refining and be flexible in areas that need little tweaking. According to Robertson’s article ‘There is also a potential loss of the accumulated value of the precedents that have been established — a loss of history. Because law has value as information that can inform decision-making about future actions, anything that changes the law can potentially destroy value’. This can definitely be threatening to not only the judicial courts, but to the very basis that established well known fundamentals of law, with that being said, contracts are modernising and so must the legal structure in order for citizens to be better educated and protected. The adversarial nature of Australia’s court system deal with facts and legal implications. Here lies the establishment of such principles that make the law

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