https://doi.org/10.21697/zp.2019.19.1.12
It is generally known that freedom of contract, as expressed by the pacta sunt servanda rule, became an unquestionable principle of contract law in the theories of natural law developed in the Enlightenment. However, the roots of this principle go back much further in time, to the doctrine formulated by the medieval Canonists, who were the first to say that unilateral promises, even informal ones, were binding. Nevertheless, a long process led from these early beginnings to the definitive recognition of the principle. Te aim of the present article is to identify the crucial moments in this development, to which many different intellectual traditions contributed: from the doctrine of natural law formulated by the Canonists, through the Second Scholastic teachings pursued at the School of Salamanca, to the theories of natural law developed in the early Enlightenment. Unlike the general practice in the literature produced on the subject hitherto, my intention is not to pinpoint the exact time when the principle was created, and still less to ascribe it to any one of these intellectual movements. My argument is that it was only the overall outcome of these contributions, each of them equally important, that led to the recognition of the principle. My article focuses on its conceptual evolution, considering themes such as the creation of the general notion of the contract, its relation to the concept of a promise, the capacity of the human will to bind itself by a promise, and the moral grounds for its binding force.
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