Study On Legal Problems Of Promises Of Rewards

Although the legitimacy and enforceability of the promise of reward have been affirmed in Civil law of China, when it comes to legal practice, the existing legal basis is still not enough to solve all kinds of questions. Based on some famous cases of promises of rewards over these years, the paper will probe into related legal problems from several aspects closely linked to judicial practice, and it will learn useful experience from existing legislation of civil law countries and case precedent of common law countries using comparative method. The author tries to find out a reasonable approach and provide some advices to the future legislation on promises of rewards.The paper consists of four parts. The first part will discuss the constitutive requirements of promise of reward, with no detail words on the conceptual problems. Generally three elements constitute the promise of reward:notice to the public, the object performance of reward and the prize offered. After explaining these elements appearing in all legal systems, the paper discusses some special circumstances, such as, when the promisor makes restrictions imposed on the performer after the reward was published, and when the reward is told by another person, not the one who has the obligation to pay the reward, and when the promisor who gives the promise of reward is making a joke. The answers to these problems can be found in this paper.The second part analyses the legal character of the promise of reward in a comparative perspective. The promise of reward is explained differently in civil law and common law. The difference is principally regarding the enforcement of a promise when the performer didn't know or didn't rely on the reward declaration. The paper will compare the two solutions adopted by civil law and American courts, that is reward as a unilateral promise, and reward as a contract. The analysis will show that the unilateral approach is more preferable from the point of view of undetermined performers and from the point of view of the whole society. The notion of unilateral promise does not undermine contract law, on the contrary, when leave out the myth of consensus, a new angle may be found to analyze and outline the limits of contract.The third part elaborates the legal validity of the promise of reward. This part involves several questions, such as performance, withdraw and lapse of the promise and so on. The paper lists legislations of many civil law countries, and makes comparative analysis in order to find reasonable solutions to these questions for future legislation of our country.The final part of conclusion is a brief review over the whole text, giving an recapitulative statement to the problems of constitution elements, legal character and legal validity of promises of rewards.