RE-EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MUTUAL PROMISES IN CONTRACT LAW

The question as to whether contractual promises are dependent, interdependent or in-dependent, and their role in determining a promisee's right to withhold performance in response to a non-performing promisor, has received remarkably limited treatment in the Australian and English contract law corpus. Commentators typically provide little by way of an overarching framework for reconciling the numerous modern judgments addressing this question. This lacuna is the consequence of a perception that the juris-prudence concerning the relationship of promises is now otiose, having been usurped by the modern doctrine of termination. This article attempts to systematise the jurisprudence and demonstrate its continuing practical relevance. The analysis suggests that this jurisprudence cannot be dismissed as merely an unruly aberration. It is a robust doctrine in its own right, whose normative bases share much in common with better-recognised doctrines of contract law.