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On the evening of May 7th, 2013, Professor Qi (George) Zhou from Sheffield Law School delivered a lecture titled “Limits of Mandatory Rules in Contract Law” to SHUFE Law students. The lecture was hosted by Doctor Hu Ling.
Professor Zhou firstly explained the concept of mandatory rule, saying that mandatory rule in contract law was a legal rule with which the parties must comply. If the mandatory rule is in conflict with a contract term, the mandatory rule will prevail. Mandatory rule is regarded as one of rules that regulates the abuse of bargaining power where the abuse impairs only the individual party to a contract.
According to Professor Zhou’s opinion, mandatory rule is not always useful, sometimes it’s useless. He illustrated these limits by an example in commercial agency law, namely Article 17 of the Commercial Agent Regulation 1993. Article 17 aims to benefit the commercial agent by forcing the principal to make a mandatory end payment to the agent on termination of the contract. By undertaking an economic analysis, Professor Zhou proved that Article 17 could not benefit the commercial agent. However, it makes both the agent and the principal worse off.
During the explanation, a fierce debate between Professor Zhou and audiences raised. The point is whether the Article 17 always actually benefits the agent. The audiences insisted that Article 17 provide an efficient way to protect the weaker party in a contract law.What Professor Zhou tries to make clear is that Article 17 can not always perform its function as the rules intent to originally.
(by Andy)
Published：2013-05-09
Hit：692
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