ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the mechanisms that the courts use to decide whether an agreement has been reached. ‘Agreement’ is central to the law of contract in England and Wales. In most cases that are adjudicated, the court regards its role as giving effect to an agreement reached between the parties. The rules of ‘offer’ and ‘acceptance’, and their use as the basis for deciding whether there has been an agreement between contracting parties, derives, as with much of the classical law of contract, from late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century case law. A situation similar to the unilateral contract cases on ‘accepting’ a reward of which one is unaware can arise in a bilateral contract if there are matching ‘cross-offers’. The former issue may be important in international transactions in deciding which set of legal rules governs the contract. The case provides no direct authority on the issue of the time when a telexed acceptance takes effect.
