Law of agency

The law of agency is an area of commercial law dealing with a set of contractual, quasi-contractual and non-contractual fiduciary relationships that involve a person, called the agent, who is authorized to act on behalf of another (called the principal) to create legal relations with a third party.[1] It may be referred to as the equal relationship between a principal and an agent whereby the principal, expressly or implicitly, authorizes the agent to work under their control and on their behalf. The agent is, thus, required to negotiate on behalf of the principal or bring them and third parties into contractual relationship. This branch of law separates and regulates the relationships between:

  • agents and principals (internal relationship), known as the principal-agent relationship;
  • agents and the third parties with whom they deal on their principals' behalf (external relationship); and
  • principals and the third parties when the agents deal.
  1. ^ "Document-Id: 911000", Trans-Lex.org, Restatement of Agency (Second) § 1. Agency; Principal; Agent. "(1) Agency is the fiduciary relation which results from the manifestation of consent by one person to another that the other shall act on his or her behalf and subject to her control, and consent by the other so to act. (2) The one for whom action is to be taken is the principal. (3) The one who is to act is the agent."