Granieri, Massimiliano --- "Technological contracts" [2017] ELECD 618; in Monateri, Giuseppe Pier (ed), "Comparative Contract Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 408

Book Title: Comparative Contract Law

Editor(s): Monateri, Giuseppe Pier

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849804516

Section: Chapter 17

Section Title: Technological contracts

Author(s): Granieri, Massimiliano

Number of pages: 43

Abstract/Description:

Virtually any aspect of law is influenced by technological progress. This has been true over time; after all, the very history of mankind witnesses the interaction between technology and legal institutions. But it holds true as well in space, because the transnational vocation of technology sooner or later turns into a challenge for all legal systems and their ability to govern social relationships that happen within areas subject to state sovereignty. Contract law is no exception to such impact. The massive emergence of technology in the realm of contracts and contract law has been interpreted mainly in terms of transaction costs reduction, since technology is instrumental to form agreements in a more expeditious way, regardless of the distance between contractors. In this respect, the advent of technology in contract law has too often and too simplistically been considered the same as e-commerce. All those may prove very partial views of the phenomenon, but they have been the major driving forces within legal systems to adjust traditional contract law in order to support the use of technology in connection with perfecting and executing transactions. Nevertheless, the implications of technology’s pervasiveness are as profound on contract law as they are on contracts as social institutions and go well beyond modifying the way offer and acceptance meet to form an agreement.