To entitle an article “the future of information technology law” may appear unduly adventurous to those who would argue that the subject has yet to establish a present. The purpose of this contribution is therefore to give some information about the current reach of the subject as well as the directions in which it is likely to grow.

The principle of frustration of contracts, so succinctly stated by Lord Radcliffe in Davis Contractors Ltd. v. Fareham U.D.C., is now well settled and accepted in both Britain and Australia. Its difficulty lies mainly in its application to particular facts, for opinions may sensibly differ as to whether a given contract is frustrated. Of course it can be conceded that some aspects of the doctrine still raise interesting matters of principle, such as the idea that frustration must not be self-induced. But overall the doctrine itself engenders a certain feeling of contentment.

Alan Brudner recently observed that a significant tendency within contemporary legal scholarship has been “the movement toward comprehending private law in terms of non-legal ‘perspectives’ that reduce to surface rhetoric the discourse by which private law articulates and understands itself”. This is most obviously true of the economic analysis of law, and not simply in so far as it introduces a vocabulary that is unfamiliar to the lawyer. For the perspective which has informed the most influential currents within that movement is fundamentally aggregative in orientation, so that legal doctrines developed within a bilateral adjudicative framework, focusing on justice between two parties, are inevitably cast in a subordinate and instrumental role. Economic approaches seek to explain the law from a standpoint outside of the law's own framework, and to reveal a deep rationale for particular legal doctrines which would not be transparent to the lawyers and judges who developed those doctrines.