C. H. S. Fifoot

Cecil Herbert Stuart Fifoot FBA (1899 – 31 January 1975) was a British legal scholar. A fellow of Hertford College, Oxford, from 1924 to 1959, he was known for his works on English legal history and for his textbook on English contract law, commonly known as Cheshire and Fifoot's Law of Contract, now in its seventeenth edition.

Life and career Cecil Fifoot was born in Penarth, near Cardiff, the son of Sydney Fifoot, manager of the Great Western Colliery Company, and of Maria Trevor. He was educated at Berkhamsted School, before being commissioned into the Royal Field Artillery in 1917, aged 18. He was sent with a mortar unit to France, where he was injured in July 1918, leaving him partially deaf, and spent the rest of the war in hospital. He also wrote two monographs on the development of English law and a biography of Lord Mansfield.

Fifoot was also an important contract law scholar. His textbook on the English contract law, The Law of Contract (1946), co-authored with his former tutor Geoffrey Cheshire, quickly became a leading textbook on the subject. Originally known as Cheshire and Fifoot's Law of Contract, it is now in its seventeenth edition (2017) as Cheshire, Fifoot, and Furmston's Law of Contract.

Publications

English Law and its Background, 1932 Lord Mansfield, 1936 The Law of Contract (with Dr G. C. Cheshire), 1945, 8th edition 1972 Cases on the Law of Contract (with Dr G. C. Cheshire), 1945, 6th edition 1973 History and Sources of the Common Law, 1949

Pollock and Maitland, 1970 (the 31st David Murray Lecture at Glasgow University)