Consensualism (Lat. Consensus ad idem – agreement to the same thing, common opinion) means that the will of contracting parties is regarded to be the most important in a contract in contract law. Due to this reason mutual rights and duties can be set only by the actions of capable contracting parties. The principle of consensualism is at the core of Contract law. It claims to regard the intentions and the will of the parties rather than certain parts of a contract, while interpreting the contract. In cases where during the interpretation of contracts differences between the real intentions of the parties and the meaning of linguistic text of the contracts occur, priority should be given to the general and genuine intentions of the contracting parties. In this case formalism is negated, while formalism, being contrary to consensualism, instead of giving the priority to the will of parties, gives it to the outward form of that will’s expression. Despite formalism in contract law occurs more seldom nowadays, in some cases it is not enough for contracting parties just to come to an agreement in order to have a valid contract. Sometimes the certain form of its expression is needed too. This diploma work deals with peculiarities of the principle of consensualism in contract law. The main aspects discussed in the paper are: the importance of the principle of consensualism interpreting the contracts within the Continental and Common law systems, relation between consensualism and... [to full text]