ABSTRACT
Francis Reynolds taught the law of contract, and the United Kingdom acceded to the European Economic Community. Prior to that, competition law in the United Kingdom consisted mainly of the Restrictive Trade Practices Acts 1956 and 1968, the Resale Prices Act 1964 and the Fair Trading Act 1973. Within the syllabus for the law of contract, this chapter describes the idea of a contract being unenforceable because of possible detriments to the competitive process only in the context of the restraint of trade doctrine. It reveals that judges may view with distaste technical invocations of the competition rules in order to avoid contractual obligations. The judicial distaste at that time for avoiding contractual obligations through reliance on the restraint of trade doctrine seems to be replicated when Article 81(1) is invoked by a disappointed contracting party; Article 82, however, seems to give rise to different considerations.
