You make a worthwhile point, and I think that we're talking about the same thing from different perspectives. For example I'm glad the Unfair Contract Terms Ac

You make a worthwhile point, and I think that we're talking about the same thing from different perspectives. For example I'm glad the Unfair Contract Terms Act (and its successors exist), but I would have considered it a formalisation of existing, inconsistently applied, principles. As I see it, the magic of common law is that actual decisions can depend on which way the wind is blowing at the time, while keeping vague long-term ideals. The concept clearly had some support in the Doctrine of Fundamental Breach. Perhaps you were already born in time for e.g. Canada Steamship Lines Ltd v The King (1952) which limited the ability to include exclusions for liability in a contract, in a way that that wasn't codified until the Unfair Contracts Terms Act. Anyway I think we don't substantially disagree, and I think it's valuable to have a range of reasonable conceptualizations of the same history.