2 Offers and Invitations to Treat

Subject(s):

Third parties — Construction of contract — Formation of contract — Interpretation of contract — Validity of contract

This chapter begins by discussing how developed legal systems seem to have adopted the technique of analyzing transactions in terms of offer and acceptance to determine whether there is an agreement. It then turns to the identification of offers, covering the definition of an offer; the requirements of a valid offer, i.e. extent of commitment evinced, the certainty of the terms used, and the specification of the addressees; how the language used in the proposal is the most decisive factor when examining what the addressee is entitled to conclude when judging the proposal to be an offer; and the communication of offer.