32nd Singapore Law Review Annual Lecture: “Humble Good Faith ‘3 by 4’” (Professor Mindy Chen-Wishart)

32nd Singapore Law Review Annual Lecture: “Humble Good Faith ‘3 by 4’” (Professor Mindy Chen-Wishart)

Each year, the Singapore Law Review (SLR) organises the SLR Annual Lecture, featuring legal luminaries on topics of their specialisation or interest. The SLR Lecture remains a hallmark and tradition in the local legal fraternity — it is the longest-running lecture series in Singapore and accredited by the Singapore Institute of Legal Education for CPD Points. This year, the Lecture was held on 29^th October. The Guest Speaker for the Event was Professor Mindy Chen-Wishart, Dean of the Oxford Law Faculty. She lectured on the topic of good faith in the common law of contract.

Synopsis of Lecture:

Contrary to orthodoxy, good faith is no stranger to common law. Properly understood, we have been “speaking prose all our lives without knowing it”. The debate over whether to introduce a doctrine of good faith is therefore misconceived—the horse has bolted; the stable door has opened. Rather, the salient questions are: (i) How can a good faith requirement be justified? (ii) What role should it play in the evolution of contract law? (iii) What does it require? and (iv) How can we start to taxonomize its demands?

Good faith is a threefold attitude of honesty, fair dealing and fidelity to the contractual purpose that is constitutive of the activity of contracting. This is manifest in many contract law rules that apply with different intensity and effect to four identifiable categories of contracts. This is good faith “3 by 4”. Open recognition of this humble version of good faith will: make explicit the implicit ethical content of the common law of contract, enhance our understanding and organization of many apparently disparate rules, legitimize these rules and facilitate legal development in a manner consistent with common law incrementalism. This leaves open the policy questions of how far and how fast common law should travel along the road of good faith.

Click the video below to view the lecture: