Abstract:
Jurists have played a crucial role in creating structures aimed at representing the South African law of contract. This Article traces how these structures originated in the civilian tradition, but were also influenced from the nineteenth century onwards by competing common law approaches. The focus is especially on the contribution of the prominent South African contract lawyer, JC de Wet. Key conclusions are that jurists, including De Wet, are strongly influenced by the structures used by their predecessors, and that innovations are often only modest in scope and introduced incrementally. Determining the underlying motivation behind the jurists’ structural choices can be a complex matter. However, it is at least clear that De Wet’s choices cannot be ascribed to an ideological, “purist” preference for structures followed in the civilian tradition. The effect of this tradition is rather on his method, which is characterized by a rigorous systematic and conceptual approach to setting out the law of contract, and which, at times, is quite pragmatic in its structural choices. This approach has been perpetuated in a number of standard works in the field.
