124 Summary TJ}c development of contract Lviv in the Szi'cdish Supreme C.onrt This paper is a first attempt to deseribe how a general law of contraet developed in Sweden. In view of the fact that this study is a contribution to the bicentenarv celebration of the Supreme Court m 1989, the focus is on the case law produced bv this Court. This is not uniListified considering the course of development. Although in the growth of a law of contract, custom has undoubtedlv been the main source of law, the judge made law, inspired particularly bv the textbooks produced b\’ legal scholars, comes probabK next in importance. Legislation was for a long time practicallv non-existent, and the proposals for legislation before the late 19th centurv had very little substance in this field. Only some parts of the law of contract are dealt with: how a general law of contract grew up, how binding contracts were made, how they were interpreted and supplemented, whereas questions concerning invalidity, termination, agenc\' etc. are left aside. Emphasis is laid on developments in the 19th and the early 20th centuries, betore the general Contracts Act was passed in 1913, but manv lines of development are brieflv followed up to the present times. The Contracts Act meant neither a break nor a marked leap forward in the deselopment of contract law. It was in certain respects imue ot a codification, although it also contained some important innovations. The Swedish Law-Book ot 1734, wich is still formallv the framework ot our law, although almost every part of it has been renewed, contained no special chapter ot general contract rules. The part called Handels Balk, which literally means “commercial code", contained rules on special types of contract, such as sale of goods, lease, loan, suretv, pledge, master and servant, partnership and mandate. It was not a code of commerce in the continental sense. It contained simple rules on various ts pes of contract without anv general rules on the formation of contracts. Contracts for the sale of goods, however, have the position of the principal type of contract. Sale was the subject of the first chapter of the Handels Balk. Its two first articles contained all that existed until 1915 of general rules of contract: 1:1. A sale shall be made without coercion and fraud with the seller’s and the buver's true consent. If it is made otherwise, it shall be void. 1:2. If a legal sale has been closed, it shall stand and not be cancelled. It follows from these articles that the consensus ad idem, this “closing” mechanism, is the essence of the contract. There is no question of ofter and acceptance. There was course no need for such rules as long as the sale ot goods was a deal between one man and another. In international trade the merchants sailed m the ships with their goods and traded in person or possible’ bv proxy. There was normalK- a man-to-man relation. It is interesting to note that, whereas in Sweden this very rudiment of a general law ot contract was tied to the contract of sale, Denmark had, alreade- in 1683, introduced rules concerning contracts in general, the Danish Law 5-1-1 and 2: All contracts that are made by free will shall be kept as they are worded. Denmark was closer to the Continent and more stronglv influenced by the Natural Law doctrine. The development of trade called for new modes of contracting. Contracting inter absentes, bv writing and as time went on by telegraph, gave rise to the method of coneluding the contract in two or more steps, the otfer and the acceptance being two separate “declarations of will”, the combination of which constituted the contract. The offer-acceptance model seems to have emerged in the 18th century. The earliest exampies of legislation based on this model seem to be the Prussian .Allgemeines Landrecht of o\
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