The parol-evidence rule made written documents’ plain words bar contradicting oral promises.

Evidence

Contract as a branch of law can best be called residual; it dealt with those areas of business life not otherwise regulated. Its cardinal principle was permissive: whatever the parties decide, that should be carried out. Of course, they had to agree, or else there was no contract—​no meeting of the minds. This phrase, “meeting of the minds,” should not be taken too literally. The law emphasized the document itself, if there was one, and the plain meaning of its words, just as it did in land law or the law of negotiable instruments, and probably for similar reasons. … For example, a rule, which came to be called the parol-​evidence rule, shut off any evidence that might contradict the terms of a written document (at any rate, a final document, as opposed to a draft or a preliminary version). As Theophilus Parsons explained, “the parties write the contract when they are ready to do so, for the very purpose of including all that they have finally agreed upon, and excluding everything else.” … In Mumford v. M’Pherson (New York, 1806), the buyer of a ship claimed that the seller promised, orally, that “the ship was completely copper-​fastened.” The bill of sale contained no such promise. The parol-​evidence rule prevented the buyer from winning his case; where a contract “is reduced to writing,” said the court, “everything resting in parol” (that is, everything that was merely oral) “becomes thereby extinguished. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1627

Categorization

• DEFINE: Concrete definition of the parol-evidence rule with an illustrative case for shared course vocabulary.
• XREF: connects to: The plain-meaning rule forced lawyers into dual-level arguments about statutory meaning. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 1988; Plain-meaning interpretation itself presupposes a policy rule favoring literal reading — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 1989

Broader Connections

• Plain-meaning interpretation itself presupposes a policy rule favoring literal reading #expands (0.80) — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 1989
• The plain-meaning rule forced lawyers into dual-level arguments about statutory meaning. #expands (0.75) — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 1988