Abstract:
In recent years, with the dawn of peace in the country, the
promotion of investments and businesses has taken priority in the
development drive of the post-war Sri Lanka. In that context, it is
undeniable that the reliance on information and communication technology
is inevitable. Moreover, electronic-contracts have gained importance in our
daily life over last decades. Even more interestingly, in the world of growing
Internet, electronic transactions seem to depict not only a phenomenal
success of the new technology, but also a conceptual puzzle that challenges
conventional wisdom on legal principles. However, limited academic
attention has been paid to investigate the issues posed by e-commerce
contracts not only in Sri Lanka but also in many jurisdictions. The
traditional law relating to formation of contract seems to be not directly
applicable for contracts that are entered into online in the era of rapid
development of information technology and improvement thereof. Even the
introduced e-commerce model laws do not provide clear-cut solutions for
neo-native issues such as mobile electronic commerce. There is also a
challenge to the validity of the orthodox concepts of contract law relating to
the formation of contracts such as offer and acceptance, capacity to the
contract and other formalities in the world of growing e-commerce
transactions. In this backdrop, this research attempts to analyze the issue of
novel application of electronic contract law in the context of the ‘old wine in
new bottles’ and to come up with possible recommendations. Moreover, this
research deals with the identification of possible solutions for the traced
problems in the existing legal framework. It is hoped that this research
would be a stepping stone for law reformers, practitioners, adjudicators and
academics in their attempts to expand the horizons of the application of
contact law in a digital era.
