Establishment,Binding Effect And Legal Effect Of Contract

Adopting a method of dualism of fact and evaluation, on condition that the civil law is the judging rule, and starting with the definition of contract, the author of this article thinks that the essence of contract is meeting of minds added with debts .The establishment of a contract is a matter of factual judgment, with the judging criterion of "meeting of minds" . To establish a contract, in Roman law, a form agreed with two parties or goods tendering was needed some times. Their purposes were to add debts on the meeting of minds. But in modern civil law, the principle that the parties should be given the maximum latitude in establishing a contract adds the debts on the agreement at once when the parties come to a "meeting of the minds" and makes these unnecessary. Now, the tendering of goods is execution of a contract while a form agreed with two parties is just a proof of meeting of minds. Apart from offer and promise, to form an agreement, there are some other ways such as cross offer, minds accomplishment, over half of number manner and or so. There are two kinds of effects of contract. The first is the contract' s binding effects that mean that the contract has binding force over the contractual parties; the second is contract' slegal effects. Contract' s effect is also a matter of factual judgment, with just two results: yes or no. The contract' s binding effects include both the formal and the substantial. Generally speaking, when a contract is established, both the formal and the substantial binding effects happen at once. If a contract is based on agreed premises or periods, only after valid premise achieved or valid period past, its substantial binding effect can be happened. At this time, the contract goes into the phase of performance. After a contract goes into effect, if a party does not perform the obligation, the other party is entitled to relief because of breach to protect his expectations. Why can the injured party do so? The reason is that a contract is fictionally valid since its establishment. The fictional validity is the key factor to our knowledge of contract' s effects. In the article, author still studies the contract' s registration and permit and our contract law' s words "according to law" in articles 8 and 44. On the other hand, legal effect of contract, as another kind of contract' s effect, is a matter of evaluation judgment, which is a higher-level knowledge activity only to be suitably carried out by official agencies. To legal effect of a contract, the conclusion of the judgment should be either valid or void. The existence of a voidable contract is illogical. To clearly realize contract' s effects, we should resort to contract' s fictional validity and organically compound substantive law and procedural law.