Study Of The Scope Of Contractual Liability

Contract plays a very important role in economic life of modern society. The contract liability institutions aimed at safeguarding contractual legal system are even more significant in the market economy. Thanks to the progressive advancement of good faith doctrine in civil and commercial law, a series of contract liabilities such as contract fault liability, liability of anticipatory breach of contract, liability of actual breach of contract, and liability of violation of contractual obligations have been put into the contract law of China on the basis of good faith and trust. Since different contract liabilities have different natures and features, it is of theoretical and practical significance to define the scope of compensation in a reasonable way for each kind of contract liability. Taking this as a cutting point, the author uses comparative jurisprudence method, analytic jurisprudence method, and interest jurisprudence method to make a profound and systematic research on the scope of compensation of various contractual liabilities with the purpose to be helpful for the perfection of legislation and to give guidance to the judicatory practice.The essay is divided into five parts.Part I is about the scope of compensation for contracting fault'liability. It probes into the nature and features of contract fault liability. Since it is the purpose of establishing the contract fault liability to resume the injuring party to the condition before concluding of the contract, the author holds that its scope of compensation should be the losses of trust interest, which includes actual losses and opportunity interest losses caused by the contract fault, and maintaining interest losses in particular situations. Two other issues are also discussed in this part: Whether the compensation of trust interest is limited to the interest in expectancy and whether mental compensation can be requested. The scope of compensation in case of the formation failure of a contract, invalidity of a contract, contract being cancelled, and other pre-contract obligations is studied on the basis of the previous discussion.The scope of compensation for liability of anticipatory breach of contract isdiscussed in Part II. It first studies the nature and features of the liability of anticipatory breach of contract. Then by comparing and analyzing the institution of anticipatory breach of contract and the institution of the right to plea of unease, the author points out the defects existing in the contract law of China and suggests that the institution of anticipatory breach of contract should be applied in case of express breach, while the institution of the right to plea of unease should be applied in case of implied and constructed breach of contract. Due to the fact that no actual breach of contract exists in anticipatory breach of contract, the scope of compensation should not exceed the interest in expectancy. The author thus argues that whether it is the express breach in the institution of anticipatory breach of contract or the implied and constructed breach of contract applied in the institution of the right to plea of unease, its concrete scope of compensation should be confined to the interest in expectancy and losses avoidable due to the cancellation in advance should be deducted. Only in this way, can the private law concept of equity and justice be met in deed.Part III covers the scope of compensation for liability of actual breach of contract. It first expounds the nature and features of the liability of actual breach of contract. Since the institution of actual breach of contract is aimed at reaching the performed situation, the scope of compensation should be the interest in expectancy, namely, the losses of the interest attainable by expected rules and sometimes the losses of necessary maintaining interest. It then probes into the possibility of mental compensation and limitation of the compensation of the interest in expectancy by expected rules. Scopes of compensation for different forms of actual breach a...