4 Freedom of Contract and Its Limitation

The freedom (pacta sunt servanda's private face): the parties' liberty to contract-or-not, with whom, on what terms (the Code's party-autonomy principle — Madav Kumar Karki v. High Court Patan and Others, NKP 2077, Vol. 3, D.No. 10461: the parties-are-autonomous holding — the Court's respect for the parties' own bargain). The limitations (the modern contract's regulation): 1. Mandatory law: the statutory invalidity floors (the void-and-voidable categories — Unit 5); the formalities (the writing-and-attestation requirements for the defined contracts — the registration-linked enforceability); 2. Good faith-and-fair dealing: the Code's good-faith performance standard (the civil-law family's signature — the duty to perform honestly, to cooperate, to inform); 3. The protective statutes: consumer, labour, tenancy — the weaker party's shields against the standard form's terms; 4. Public policy: the immorality-and-illegality bars (Unit 5); the constitutional rights' horizontal reach (equality-and-dignity in the private-bargain context — the human-rights influence below); 5. The form's own limits: exemption-clause control (Unit 4); unfair-terms doctrine.