You may know what business is. You may even be familiar with law. Today, we're going to put them together?business law. We'll deal with one super-huge business law concept here?contracts.
Now, you've probably heard a lot about contracts. Maybe you've even signed one. Maybe your favorite basketball player just signed one. But what is a contract? Simply put, a contract is a legally enforceable promise or set of promises.
So, it follows that contract law determines what promises are enforced, whether promises have been performed, and remedies for breaches of contract (meaning somebody has broken a contract in some way). These remedies are basically compensation for, or fixes to, the breached part of the contract.
We'll get to the bottom of this contract stuff by looking at two areas: the sources of contract law and the requirements for a valid contract. We'll start with the sources of contract law.
The Sources of Contract Law
There are basically two sources of contract law: The Uniform Commercial Code (the UCC) and common law. Let's see how and when each apply to contract law.
In the chaotic days before the Uniform Commercial Code, each state in our fair union had its own commercial laws. It was anarchy! Well, it wasn't that bad, but things were inconsistent. The UCC was created to establish a uniform set of rules to govern commercial transactions. This, my friends, brought harmony and stability to our great nation. Or at least a little consistency. The UCC attempts to unify the national marketplace.
The UCC covers a broad range of commercial transactions. For our purposes, when we discuss the UCC, we're talking about Article Two, which concerns the laws covering the sale of goods.
What are goods? A good is a tangible item that a person can ...