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Christian Hillgruber
The Contract as a Source of Law. As the history of law demonstrates, the contract constitutes one of the oldest and most important legal instruments. In legal philosophy, the question arises where the binding character of the contract comes from. According to the positivist doctrine, the validity of treaties between individuals and of treaties between an individual and the public administration is due to its recognition by the respective national legal order applying to the treaty. Public international law as a legal system of coordination, however, can only exist if the consent of the contracting (state) parties to be bound by the treaty is able to create the binding character „by itself“. Looking at the arguments put forward by the different theories of secular natural law, irrespective of the differing deductions, there is obviously a general agreement that the certainty of legal transactions depends upon the legitimate expectation that a contracting party keeps its word. Ultimately, the binding character of a contract has to be taken as a given „a priori“, in international law as well as in national law.
