ABSTRACT
English judges and academics state from time to time that the English law of contract is about enforceable agreements245 and it has to be said at once that there is a certain truth in this view.246 Thus, most English commercial contract documents superficially look little different from the commercial agreements to be found anywhere in Europe, and even the legislator in the United Kingdom occasionally uses the language of agreement.247 Moreover, it would be wrong to assert that the idea of agreement is totally absent from the history of English obligations law.248 Yet, a strict legal analysis of English contract law will reveal, as we have already indicated, that it is not the notion of convention but the notion of pollicitatio or promissum that forms the focal point of liability. The English contractor is liable in damages at common law for breach of promise rather than non-performance of an agreement.249
