understanding the law in a historical and comparative perspective 237 tator’s freedom tomake aholograph will: if he is in a state of dependency vis-à-vis the person to be instituted as heir or legatee, the will has to be made in notarial form.16 The second scenario takes us to late nineteenth-century London. During the great influenza epidemic that swept through the British Isles in the winter of 1889/90, a certain Frederick Augustus Roe marketed a carbolic smoke ball he had developed, promising to pay £100 to anyone who contracted influenza after having used the ball three times daily for a fortnight. Despite having used a carbolic smoke ball in the prescribed manner, a Mrs Carlill contracted influenza and duly sued the Carbolic Smoke Ball Company for the promised sum.17 The dispute posed a basic question of private law with a long pedigree.18 Does a unilateral promise (in this case, a promise of reward) bind the promisor, as maintained by several writers of the Spanish Natural law school (Covarruvias, Soto, Molina), or does it only become binding once it has been accepted? The latter view was propagated by Leonardus Lessius (1554–1623).19 An acceptance is necessary, he argued, because it constitutes the conditio sine qua non on the part of the promisor, for assenting to be bound. After Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) had adopted this view in his influential treatise ‘De iure belli ac pacis’, it dominated the further discourse.20 Via Pufendorf and Pothier the idea that a promise needs to be accepted before it can be regarded as binding came to influence many European legal systems, among them French and English law.21 16 Gregor Christandl, Selbstbestimmtes Testieren in einer alternden Gesellschaft: Eine Untersuchung zum Schutz des Erblassers vor Fremdbestimmung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016). 17 Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company [1893] 1 QB256 (CA); for details, see A. W. BSimpson, ‘Quackery and Contract Law; The Case of the Carbolic Smoke Ball’, Journal of Legal Studies 14 (1985), 345–90. 18 Zimmermann 1996, 572–6. 19 See James Gordley, Philosophical Origins of Modern Contract Doctrine (Oxford: OUP, 1991) 80; Leonardus Lessius, De Iustitia et Iure (Paris, 1618), libII, capXVIII, dubVI. 20 HugoGrotius, Hvgonis Grotii De ivre belli ac pacis libri tres, ed. B. J. A. de Kanter &B. J. A. van Hettinga Tromp (Leiden: Brill, 1939, repr. 1993) libII, capXI, 14. 21 But not Scots law; see Reinhard Zimmermann & Phillip Hellwege, ‘Belohnungsversprechen: “pollicitatio”, “promise” oder “offer”? Schottisches Recht vor demHintergrund der europäischen Entwicklungen’, Zeitschrift für Europarecht, Internationales Privatrecht und Rechtsvergleichung 39 (1998), 133–43.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=