This essay discusses the topic of what common lawyers call ‘apparent authority’, whereby a principal may be bound by an unauthorized act because the agent appears to the third party to be authorized. Other legal systems reach similar (but not always identical) results, sometimes by different means. It contrasts the view taken by most legal systems that the principal’s liability depends on his own conduct (or ‘manifestation’), with the diametrically opposed view that the liability depends on the reasonableness of the impression received by the third party, and whether there is any intermediate position. It considers the technical means for giving effect to such approaches, especially the first, and whether the ‘estoppel’ approach of Anglo-Australasian common law is preferable to the approach of Restatement, Third, which treats apparent authority as simply another form of authority not requiring additional means to be made effective.
European Review of Private Law