Abstract

Section 10 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872 stipulates that all agreements made with the ‘free consent’ of parties who are ‘competent’ to contract are enforceable as contracts. Section 11 declares that minors are not competent to contract. While the Act goes on to specifically set out the consequences of vitiated ‘consent’ in sections 19, 19A, and 20, it omits spelling out the consequences of contracting with a minor. Nevertheless, a decision of the Privy Council, Mohori Bibee v. Dharmodas Ghose (1903) read the Act as having given a definitive answer to this question and took the view that minors’ contracts were void ab initio (not voidable or void) which meant that neither party could enforce it, nor could they seek to be restituted to their original positions under provisions stipulating restitution in the case of either voidable (section 64) or void (section 65) contracts. Indian courts have since invoked Mohori Bibee in bloodless abstraction, as if it were an unquestionable axiom of Indian contract law. This article argues that the Privy Council’s reading of the Act in Mohori Bibee is problematic, and its invention of the category of contracts void ab initio is unsupported by the Act.

中文翻译：

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未成年人合同：1872年印度合同法的一个主要问题

摘要

1872年《印度合同法》第10条规定，在“有能力”参加合同的当事方的“自由同意”下达成的所有协议都可以作为合同强制执行。第11条声明未成年人没有合同能力。虽然该法继续在第19、19A和20节中具体阐明了被废止的“同意”的后果，但它省略了与未成年人签约的后果。尽管如此，枢密院的一项裁决Mohori Bibee诉Dharmodas Ghose（1903）认为该法对这个问题给出了明确的答案，并认为未成年人的合同从头开始是无效的。（并非无效或无效），这意味着任何一方都不能执行它，也不能根据规定在有无效（第64条）或无效（第65条）合同的情况下恢复原状的规定恢复原状。此后，印度法院在毫无血腥的抽象中援引了Mohori Bibee，就好像这无疑是印度合同法的公理。本文认为，枢密院在Mohori Bibee中对该法的解读是有问题的，该法不支持从头算起发明合同类别。