Clear Rules Still Produce Fuzzy Results: Impossibility in Indian Contract Law
Robert Scott and others have forcefully argued that the justification for commercial statute-drafting is efficiency. Since commercial parties can draft their own contracts, legislatures should draft default rules, he argues, only when it will save commercial parties time and money. Greater efficiency is achieved when the costs of the gains produced by commercial transactions are reduced. Thus, with few exceptions, the rules of commercial law should be clear, precise, and what most parties would want most of the time. Statutory precision emulates a well-drafted agreement and reduces the risk of moral hazard. The excuse of contractual impossibility (including the liberalized version of commercial impracticability as well as the reciprocal doctrine of frustration of purpose, collectively, impracticability) stands in some tension with the goal of efficiency. Two responses to this uncertainty seem plausible. First, the law could provide a more precise impracticability rule, one that complies with the precision corollary. Alternatively, we can simply give up on the impracticability project, leaving risks to fall where they may and any excuses to the contract parties and their drafting efforts. This article will address the feasibility of the first alternative, that we can build a better impracticability mousetrap. Instead of speculating about what forms a more precise version of impracticability might take, we will examine a currently subsisting example, section 56 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872. I conclude that the Indian Supreme Court has missed an opportunity to apply section 56 as originally understood and that those who stress the goal of efficiency should not count on judicial application of even precise rules.
Changing Contract Lenses: Unexpected Supervening Events in English, New Zealand, U.S., Japanese, and International Sales Law and Practice
This article compares differences in the reasoning underlying contractual relationships between English and New Zealand law and U.S. and Japanese law. It then builds upon an existing framework by adding the notion of didactic formality to identify another important contrast between the laws of these countries. It also discusses how CISG and UPICC fit in to this spectrum. The article concludes by questioning "strong convergence" theory in commercial law worldwide.
The Area of Freedom, Security and Justice ten years on: Successes and future challenges under the Stockholm Programme. CEPS Paperbacks. June 2010
This book celebrates the tenth anniversary of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) by bringing together the views of key practitioners and policy-makers who have played an outstanding role in thinking about and shaping EU policies on freedom, security and justice. 
 
Ten years ago, the member states transferred competences to the EU for law and policy-making in the fields of immigration, asylum and border controls, and began the transfer process for criminal justice and policing. This decade of European cooperation on AFSJ policies has experienced very dynamic convergence, the enactment of a large body of European law and the setting-up of numerous EU agencies working in these domains. Such dynamism in policy-making has not been without challenges and vulnerabilities, however. As this collective volume shows, the main dilemmas that lie ahead relate to an effective (while more plural) institutional framework under the Treaty of Lisbon, stronger judicial scrutiny through a greater role for national courts and the Court of Justice in Luxembourg, better mechanisms for evaluating and monitoring the implementation of EU AFSJ law and a more solid fundamental rights strategy. The contributions in this volume address the progress achieved so far in these policy areas, identify the challenges for future European cooperation in the AFSJ and put forward possible paths for making more progress in the next generation of the EU’s AFSJ.