Contracts for a third-party beneficiary. A historical and comparative account

Through recent changes in Dutch (1992) and English (1999) private law,contracts for a third-party beneficiary are, in Western Europe, nowadaysconsidered to be effective and enforceable. This concept is, however,incompatible with both the civilian tradition on the continent and thetraditional parties-only rule of English common law. The purpose of thisstudy is to show how the problem of the third-party beneficiary was dealtwith during the various periods of Western legal thought and to discussthe subject from the perspective of present-day comparative law. The bookis of interest not only to legal historians, but also to all who are engagedwith present-day private law ? scholars, practitioners and advancedstudents.Contributors include David Ibbetson, Regius Professor of Civil Law atthe University of Cambridge, and Hendrik Verhagen, Professor of PrivateInternational Law, Comparative Law and Civil Law at the RadboudUniversity Nijmegen, attorney at the firm Clifford Chance Amsterdam,and deputy justice at the Court of Appeal, ?s-Hertogenbosch.