An Essay on the Law of Contracts, For the Payment of Specifick...
The First American Treatise on Contracts Chipman, Daniel [1765-1850]. An Essay on the Law of Contracts, For the Payment of Specifick Articles. Middlebury, VT: Published by the Author, 1822. xvi, [17]-224 pp. Octavo (8" x 5"). Contemporary calf, blind rules to boards, blind fillets and lettering piece to spine. Minor rubbing and a few minor scuffs and nicks to boards, moderate rubbing to extremities, some darkening near center of front joint and spine. Moderate toning to interior, some offsetting to endleaves, light foxing in a few places, (illegible) early owner signatures and annotations to front free endpaper, another early signature (J.H. Harris) to head of title page. $650. * First edition. Chipman's Essay was the first original treatise on the subject written in the United States. In 1847 Marvin criticized Chipman for "show[ing] what the law of contracts ought to be rather than what the law of contracts is." This remark reflects Marvin's failure to grasp the changing nature of contract law, and it shows that Chipman's ideas were ahead of their time. Indeed, as Horwitz points out, Chipman was the first American to submerge the "dominant equity theory of contract in a conception of contractual obligation based exclusively on express bargains" determined by market values. Chipman was a Vermont lawyer, a professor of law at Middlebury, a representative to the state legislature and the U.S. Congress and a delegate to several Vermont constitutional conventions. Marvin, Legal Bibliography 189. Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law 181. Cohen, Bibliography of Early American Law 3621.
Price: $650.00
Book number 72583