Contract Law in the USSR and the United States (review)

280 SAIS REVIEW community only to Albania, South Korea became subject to an unprecedented degree of outside influence. Clough suggests that the trend of the future will be gradual convergence of the two rivals, as North Korea falls further behind South Korea's economic and diplomatic performance, as both Koreas resolve their problems of leadership succession, and as the big-power sponsors become impatient for a practical solution in their own — and in Korea's— interests. Convergence will occur as part of a lengthy evolutionary process beginning with the type of cross-contacts already appearing in the news: Chinese commerce with South Korea, Japanese contacts with North Korea, and tentative Soviet and American moves in the same directions. Cross-recognition and admission of both Koreas to the United Nations will follow in time and allow the evolution of a state of peaceful coexistence and eventual reunification. Even this lengthy process will require movement by the superpowers to overcome the decades-old suspicions and ideological rigidities of both sides. The final section of Embattled Korea suggests a strategy by which the United States can begin to encourage this process toward fruition. Contract Law in the USSR and the United States. By E. Allan Farnsworth and Viktor P. Mozolin. Washington, D.C: International Law Institute, 1987. 350 pp. $35.00/cloth. Reviewed by Edwin S. Rockefeller, M. I. P. P. candidate, SAIS, and member of District of Columbia Bar. The old saying, "You can't tell a book by its cover," certainly applies to this study. This is not a comparative work on contract law in the USSR and the United States, and it was not written jointly by a Russian and an American. As is made clear in the afterword, the book is made up of two separate accounts of the contract law of the respective countries—one by an American law professor at Columbia Law School, the other by a Soviet official heading the Sector of Civil Law, Institute of State and Law, at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in Moscow. A brief introduction indicates how the volume came to be published. The afterword, which was jointly written, contains the conclusion that "the differences produced by the two economic systems, considerable as they are, may not be as great as they seem at first sight" and expresses the hope that this book will encourage the "beneficial development" of "tendencies " in the two countries to overcome differences in their legal systems toward improved trade realtions. There is also an eight-page joint index. Each separate monograph follows the same five-chapter outline: 1. The Concept of Contract; 2. History of Contract Law; 3. Sources of Contract Law; 4. Characteristics and Organization of Contract Law; 5. Settlement of Contract Disputes. Farnsworth traces his history from the Norman Conquest in 1066; Mozolin's history begins on October 26, 1917, when the First Congress of Soviets expropriated private land without compensation and transferred it to the peasants. Mozolin claims that the development of contract law in the USSR has created a new type of contractual relationship based on public forms of BOOK REVIEWS 281 property and planned supervision of the economy. His use of the term "contract " is consistent with the notion of the sponsors of this project that, although "the role of contracts in each country is different . . . , a contract is a contract." In the same sense, of course, history is history, whether it is an accurate account of what happened or a fable invented for the purpose of attempting to legitimize an autocracy. For American students of foreign affairs, the Mozolin monograph is the most useful part of this book. Professor Farnsworth's treatise, although a comprehensive and comprehensible summary of U.S. contract law and a handy contrast to the Soviet counterpart, tells us nothing new. Both pieces are, as the afterword states, "essentially doctrinal." The authors do not pretend to explore how the institution of the contract actually functions in either system, although Mozolin is less reluctant to try than is Farnsworth. For example, he points out that "under the conditions of a planned economy, and in the absence of a free market. . sums of money" cannot substitute...