The contra proferentem decoy in the age of standard form contracts*

^* Certain remarks captured within this article were presented in a preliminary form at the 2022 Conference on International Contracts and Arbitration sponsored by the Vindobona Association. The author would like to thank co-panellists Cătălina Bîzîc and Octavian David for the discussions on the panel. Any mistakes are, of course, the sole responsibility of the author.

Av. drd. Mihaela GHERGHE

Universitatea din Bucureşti

Motto: "it is a maxim in law, that every man’s grant shall be taken by construction of law most forcefully against himself".

Abstract: This paper analyses the historical evolution of the process of contract interpretation by recourse to the contra proferentem rule of interpretation - the interpretation of certain wording in a manner less favourable to the party that proposed it. By conducting a historical analysis of the framework of the rule, along a comparative analysis of the manner in which the rule is...