Warren Swain, University of Auckland Faculty of Law, has posted Not Worth the Paper it's Written on: Contractual Rectification: An Historical Account, which appeared in the Journal of Equity 17 (2023): 161-180.
Written contracts have been important for millennia. They bring certain evidentiary advantages. Problems may also arise, however, when the written document fails to reflect the intentions of the parties. This is why the equitable doctrine of rectification is so important. In certain limited circumstances, it allows the written words in the contract to be modified. In recent decades, there have been considerable debates about the proper scope of rectification. These questions cannot be understood properly without a proper grasp of the history of the subject. Rectification did not develop in isolation. It was shaped by developments within the law of contract, including the parol evidence rule, the rise in commercial contracting and was impacted by the way that contracts came to rationalised. Set alongside these considerations there is a different tradition of preventing unconscionable behaviour in equity.--Dan Ernst
