Product Description

Expert authors provide a detailed treatment of the basic rules, principles, and issues in contracts. Topics covered include offer and acceptance, parol evidence and interpretation, consideration, informal contracts, promissory estoppel, contracts under seal, capacity of parties, conditions, performance, and breach. Also discusses damages, regulations, third-party beneficiaries, statutes, and frauds. The discharge of contracts and illegal bargains are also discussed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #210873 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 582 pages

About the Author
Fordham University

Customer Reviews

Excellent hornbook
If you're a One-L looking for a study aid for your Contracts class, you won't find a better hornbook than this one. Calamari's classic text provides clear and intelligible discussion of the basic principles of contract law.

Also consider the student edition of E. Allan Farnsworth's treatise on Contracts; the original was three volumes long, but the student edition is condensed to one. Farnsworth's discussion is more in-depth, wide-ranging, and denser than Calamari's, so I used Calamari to get principles clear and then turned to Farnsworth for elaboration.

Get both if you can; otherwise get this one first. That's my recommendation, anyway.

THIS IS NOT THE HORNBOOK!! THIS IS A DIFFERENT BOOK!!! "SEARCH INSIDE" IS MISLEADING!!!
THIS IS NOT THE PAPERBACK VERSION OF THE HORNBOOK. THIS IS A CANNED-OUTLINE WRITTEN BY THE AUTHORS OF THE HORNBOOK. DOES NOT REFERENCE CASES SPECIFICALLY OR OFFER A DETAILED ANALYSIS. MORE OF A "STUDY AID" ON PAR WITH EMMANUEL'S. FOR SOME REASON AMAZON CONFLATES THIS BOOK WITH THE HORNBOOK SERIES AND OFFERS IDENTICAL RECOMMENDATIONS AND DESCRIPTIONS FOR BOTH! DO NOT BUY THE PAPERBACK IF YOU WANT THE HORNBOOK!!

Mutual Mistake, The Mailbox Rule, and Other Legal Fictions
"Hornbooks" are summaries of a body of law used by angst-ridden law students to amplify and clarify the often arcane materials contained in Casebooks. The law of Contracts is one of the primary building blocks of a first year legal education, along with Property and Torts. Almost every 1L has a small library of these dark green encyclopedic volumes that weigh in by the kilogram.

CALAMARI AND PERILLO ON CONTRACTS is one of the few Hornbooks (along with PROSSER AND KEETON ON TORTS) that is considered an acceptable, though not authoritative, treatise for purposes of legal citation. Of course, cases themselves trump any other source material.

This is a very good, albeit very, very dense discussion of the Law of Contracts, which is one of the most intellectually challenging areas of the law. Most of the great legal theorists were Contracts specialists.

Most of our Common Law is a variation on Contract law---Torts is a violation of the Social Contract resulting in civil injury; Criminal law is a violation of the Social Contract resulting in wrongs punishable by incarceration or other sanctions; Property is all about implied (or express) contractual understandings as to the holding of title and interest; even Civil Procedure and Evidence are forms of Contract, a system of agreed-upon rules for conducting cases.

The sheer density of the material in CALAMARI AND PERILLO ON CONTRACTS makes this book less helpful than it might be to an overwhelmed law student. A typical 1L just doesn't have the time to parse and unpack this mahogany block of a text. There are other books out there that are more quickly and easily accessible, but none that acheives the depth of this particular volume. It is a "must have" for anyone serious in familiarizing themselves with the realm of Contracts.

So many years after the intellectual concentration camp that is First Year Law School, I find that perusing Hornbooks for interesting minutiae can be a rather enjoyable way spend a rainy, quiet afternoon. It's too bad that most law schools make grasping the underpinnings of the U.C.C. feel like root canal without novocaine. Law has a beauty that is often ruined by legal education.

If you plan to carry your Hornbooks around, get yourself a litigation case on wheels; it'll spare you a future of back problems.