Statutes and Reports of Committees
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1954.tb00268.x |
| Published date | 01 September 1954 |
| Date | 01 September 1954 |
STATUTES AND REPORTS
OF
COMMITTEIES
LAW
REFORM (ENFORCEMENT
OF
CONTRACTS)
ACT,
1954
THE
Statute of Frauds is dead; long live the contract of guarantee.
It
is in t.&s traditional form of announcement at the demise
of
a
monarch that one is tempted to greet the Enforcement of Con-
tracts Act,
1954,
an enactment which marks an historic event.
Few statutes in English law have been
so
consistently criticised
for
so
long a period of time as the Statute of Frauds,
1677.
The
principal result of its technical, procedural requirements was
to
afford an opportunity for technical, unmeritorious defences. Both
the Judiciary and plaintiffs' counsel laboured hard to restrict the
scope
of its spacious wording. Its provisions were steadily repealed
until only section
4
(with part re-enacted in the Law of Property
Act,
1925,
s.
40)
and section
17
(re-enacted in the Sale of
Goods
Act,
1893,
s.
4)
remained. Even in this attenuated form, its well
of contentious possibilities was seemingly inexhaustible.
In
the
fist edition of his classical treatise
on
sale of goods, Benjamin
found
it
necessary to devote over
130
pages to section 17
(as
amended in section
7
of the Statute of Frauds Amendment Act,
1828).
Later, Professor
J.
Williams was able to fill a monograph
with a discussion of section
In
the lives of members of the legal
profession during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the
Statute appears to have assumed the role that is filled
in
this
century by the Rent Acts. After the mid-nineteenth century, its
irrelevance to the realities of proof and procedure
in
the courts
became quite spectacular.
In
all these circumstances, its persistence
paid an impressive tribute to the inadequacy of law-reform
machinery in England.
Now, section
4
of the Sale of Goods Act,
1893,
has been repealed.
The evidentiary requirement for any special promise by an executor
or
administrator
to
answer damages out of his own estate has been
repealed. And, the similar requirements for any agreement made
upon consideration of marriage and for any agreement that is
not
to be performed within the space of one year from the making
thereof have been repealed. Only the Law of Property Act,
s.
40,
and the contract of guarantee survive.
The relatively complicated nature of real property transactions
justifies, on the whole, the continuance of section
40.'
Between
1
Based on the Law Revision Committee's Sixth Interim Report
(1937),
Cmd.
5449;
and on the Law Reform Committee's First Report
(1953),
Cmd.
8809.
2
The
Statute
of
Frauds,
s.
4,
1939,
C.U.P.
3
S.
40
was not within the terms of reference
of
either the
Law
Revision
or
the
451
Law Reform Committee.
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