>And all the discussion I can find online say breaking a contract doesn't fall under the definition of "illegal".
IIUC, breaking a contract is a civil tort[0]:
A tort is an act or omission that gives rise to injury or harm to another and
amounts to a civil wrong for which courts impose liability. In the context of
torts, "injury" describes the invasion of any legal right, whereas "harm"
describes a loss or detriment in fact that an individual suffers.1
And torts (again, IIUC) are not the breaking of a legal code, and as such cannot be illegal, as they break no laws.
Something illegal is dealt with in a criminal court (yes, there are administrative courts in various places that handle minor infractions, but those are governed under the relevant legal code and are adjudicated as such.
Civil torts are not contained within any legal code, and as such cannot be illegal. That said, there are some harms that may also rise to the level of criminality (e.g., fraud), which may also have a civil tort associated with them.
But breach of contract by itself is just breaking the rules[1] agreed upon by the parties to a contract.
> And torts (again, IIUC) are not the breaking of a legal code
Torts are (in the US, other jurisdictions may differ) either statutory torts, which break a particular, legislatively adopted code, or breaches of the common law and, as such, illegal just as crimes under the common law are in those jurisdictions which (unlike the federal system) continue to recognize common law crimes.
Both are illegal.
Though this is also somewhat tangential since as well as being wrong about the nature of torts such that your “torts are not illegal” argument is founded on faulty assumptions, you are also wrong in that, while contracts are, like torts, civil, breach of contract is not a tort.
> Something illegal is dealt with in a criminal court
No, something criminal is dealt with in criminal court. Illegal is a superset of criminal.
> Civil torts are not contained within any legal code
The United States Code has 54 “titles”. Crimes and criminal procedure are Title 18. What do you think most violations of the other 53 titles are? Largely (but not entirely) statutory torts.
Similarly, what do you think most violations of the 28 California Codes that aren’t the Penal Code are? Especially the Civil Code? Again largely, but not entirely, torts (the Commercial Code, relevant to this conversation, also significantly deals with contracts.)
> But breach of contract by itself is just breaking the rules agreed upon by the parties to a contract.
Breach of contract — the thing actionable in court — is breaking the rules in law as to when compliance with rules agreed to between parties are compulsory. That’s what makes it actionable.
IIUC, breaking a contract is a civil tort[0]:
And torts (again, IIUC) are not the breaking of a legal code, and as such cannot be illegal, as they break no laws.Something illegal is dealt with in a criminal court (yes, there are administrative courts in various places that handle minor infractions, but those are governed under the relevant legal code and are adjudicated as such.
Civil torts are not contained within any legal code, and as such cannot be illegal. That said, there are some harms that may also rise to the level of criminality (e.g., fraud), which may also have a civil tort associated with them.
But breach of contract by itself is just breaking the rules[1] agreed upon by the parties to a contract.
[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/tort
[1] https://kids.britannica.com/kids/article/rules-and-laws/6286...