Phrase Gentleman‘s Agreement

Gentlemen‘s agree­ments are also found in trade agree­ments and inter­na­tion­al rela­tions. One exam­ple is the gentlemen‘s agree­ment of 1907, in which the Unit­ed States and the Japan­ese Empire referred to immi­gra­tion from Japan and the mis­treat­ment of Japan­ese immi­grants already in Amer­i­ca. The agree­ment, which was nev­er rat­i­fied by Con­gress, pro­vid­ed that Japan would no […]

Gentlemen‘s agree­ments are also found in trade agree­ments and inter­na­tion­al rela­tions. One exam­ple is the gentlemen‘s agree­ment of 1907, in which the Unit­ed States and the Japan­ese Empire referred to immi­gra­tion from Japan and the mis­treat­ment of Japan­ese immi­grants already in Amer­i­ca. The agree­ment, which was nev­er rat­i­fied by Con­gress, pro­vid­ed that Japan would no longer issue pass­ports to peo­ple wish­ing to immi­grate to Amer­i­ca to go to work. The Unit­ed States, on the oth­er hand, would no longer allow dis­crim­i­na­tion and seg­re­ga­tion of Japan­ese cit­i­zens resid­ing in the Unit­ed States. A gentleman‘s agree­ment is an infor­mal, non-bind­ing agree­ment in which the par­ties trust each oth­er to keep their promis­es. We can also use the plur­al and say “gentlemen‘s agree­ment”. It is usu­al­ly not a doc­u­ment, that is, there are no sig­na­tures, papers or writ­ings. If one of the par­ties vio­lates the agree­ment, the oth­ers usu­al­ly have no recourse to the courts. Sim­ply put, a gentleman‘s agree­ment has no legal force in most places.

==The gov­ern­ment banned gentlemen‘s agree­ments in 1890 in trade and com­merce rela­tions between nations. How­ev­er, in the Unit­ed King­dom, such an agree­ment may be legal­ly bind­ing (see the last part of this arti­cle). A gentleman‘s agree­ment, which is rather a point of hon­or and label­ing, relies on the indul­gence of two or more par­ties in the per­for­mance of spo­ken or tac­it oblig­a­tions. Unlike a bind­ing con­tract or legal agree­ment, there is no legal rem­e­dy for breach­ing a gentlemen‘s agree­ment. “A gentleman‘s agree­ment or gentlemen‘s agree­ment is an infor­mal agree­ment in which peo­ple trust each oth­er to do what they promised.” The phrase appears in the records of the British Parliament[1] and 1835 in the Mass­a­chu­setts pub­lic records. [2] The Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary quotes P. G.… 

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