On Format Contract And Its Legal Regulation

Standard form contract to become the most widely used contract, due to the increasingly frequent use of today’s social and economic life since the19th century, and is also one of the important symbol of the development of contract law in the20th century. It emerges not only to change and replace the conventional means of contracting, but presents the new challenges to contract principle of autonomy. The way to speed up the issuing and accepting orders accompanies with the rapid standardized production, and the core mode is the pre-established and printed form to buy and sell. Standard form contract is widely used in many different industries, such as banking and insurance, railway transportation, postal communication, etc., so that the advantage in the value of convenience, speediness and efficiency become apparent. However, the widespread use of these contracts makes the drawbacks of form contract exposed at the same time. For example, some unfair phenomena such as Overlord Provision often wantonly harm the rights of many consumers.First of all, in this article, to start from the root of standard form contract; to dig deeply into the origin of it, and to analyze the pros and cons to clarify the necessity of the presence of standard form contract.Secondly, by reference to the specific contents of the legal regulations of standard form contract or form items in other countries compare with the provision of current law and regulation. Specifically, let’s use the relevant laws and regulations in Germany, the United States, and Japan as examples. Some standard form contracts are developed specially; some countries set up the preventive censorships to standard form contracts, that the certain agencies in some countries are entitled to review the market behaviors of the business owners, i.e. economic advantage side, by law; while some countries established the Group Litigation System. Through the provisions of Standard form contract of the relevant laws in detail and reference, our provisions of standard form contract are mainly present in the single laws. Meantime, through a lot of problems which have been or are likely to be encountered in reality, point out the loopholes in the current laws.Thirdly, to introduce the other regulation means of standard form contract, such as the legal and administrative means, as well as the auxiliary supervision and regulation means, including the supervision of consumer protection organizations, the industry self-supervision, and the media supervision. The specification for the standard form contract is a system engineering to use a variety of means, and to coordinate and perform multiple functions. It requires the legislative, administrative and judicial coordination and the positive interactions to build a specification mechanism of standard terms with the fine structure and the complete functions.Finally, according to the analysis and discussion as above, to summarize the solution of regulating standard form contract from the points of legislation, judicature and administration, to put forward the views to improve the current laws that is to improve the regulation of standard form contract; to improve the qualities of adjudicating cases and the laws and regulations; and to improve the administrative rules and regulations with reference to the other countries’ experiences, establish and perfect the comprehensive social supervision mechanism, and thus act to stabilize the economic order, improve contract efficiency, and protect the interests of vulnerable populations.