A Promise With Option to Cancel as Valuable Consideration

A promise creates no legally enforceable duty unless some consideration is given for it; but generally the law does not investigate as to its value or amount. This led Mr. justice Holmes to say: This being so, consideration is as much a form as a seal. The reaction against mere formality has led others to suggest that the time has come for the abolition of the requirement of consideration as well as for the abolition of the common-law operation of a seal. It is believed that the abolition of the second would be undesirable and that an attempt to abolish the first would fail. As Dean Pound, speaking of nudum pactum, says : there is something more than the fetish of a traditional Latin phrase with the hallmark of Roman legal science behind our reluctance to enforce all deliberate promises simply as such