Part 3 of 3: The Overhaul of the FAR - The Unmovable Object Paradox

By RO WIETECHA

September 17, 2025 |

The Trump Administration’s revision of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), the FAR Overhaul, which attempts to reduce the scope of mandatory government contracting requirements, is likely to have a major impact on the application of the Christian Doctrine. 

In G.L. Christian, 312 F.2d 417, mandatory or significant clauses that express a deeply ingrained strand of public procurement policy or less significant clauses, if they were not written to benefit or protect the party seeking the incorporation, are “read” into federal contracts in order to avoid the consequences that otherwise result from inadvertent (or, theoretically, deliberate) omission by contracting officers (COs). This result, judicially applying mandatory clauses in contract interpretation even if the clause was not actually written into the contract, is colloquially known as the Christian Doctrine. It relies upon a constructive notice point of law that the FAR’s publication puts everyone, including contractors, “on notice” of what was supposed to be in the contract, regardless of what an individual contract document actually says. 

The Christian Doctrine was at least a practical recognition that contract documents, typically more than three digits worth of pages long, often (almost always) contain clerical or other errors. This is almost always due to overworked federal contracting staff not having the luxury to read the documents meticulously line by line before, under intense pressure from agency program customers, executing them. Stereotypes of civil service bureaucrats aside, Federal contracting systems and procedures perennially starved of adequate and adequately trained staffing inherently lack the capacity to produce bespoke and accurate contract documents, a weakness the Christian Doctrine both remedies and enables. In an attempt to reduce personal and professional risk, government procurement staff have been known to cut and paste from one contract award document to another under a (somewhat mistaken) belief that a professionally respected and experienced CO’s work product is inherently better than what a less experienced CO or contract specialist might come up with based on their own, arguably slower and less confident read of the FAR and, particularly the FAR Matrix. This practice has in some cases persisted even after automated contract document generation software and mandatory platforms were instituted at some agencies. Again, the pressure from the contracting office’s program clients to make awards in as short a time as possible drives most of what could be perceived as carelessness or lack of attention to detail.  Don’t blame the people, blame the system.

While it is likely contractors and COs will still have to read both the actual contract and the FAR, the FAR Overhaul is likely to shift which takes precedence, the FAR or that actual contract document. Applicability of the Christian Doctrine is likely to decrease from an overall reduction of mandatory, deeply ingrained strands of public procurement policy. By removing the mandatory nature of public procurement policy, versus statutory requirements, the FAR Overhaul will likely result in an overall decreased number of disputes in which the government is able to rely upon the Christian Doctrine. This is likely to be most beneficial to contractors who have read their contracts in detail and are able to identify if and which government-benefitting, but non-mandatory, terms or clauses were omitted. 

Thus, there will be an advantage to whichever party knows the most about what is actually in the contract document rather than who knows what the FAR says should have been in it. G.L. Christian held the termination for convenience clause, which was absent in the contract at issue in the case, was legally required to have been in the contract, so the government could rely upon it. While the FAR Overhaul retains the termination for convenience clauses and guidance in Part 49, the applicability of the rationale of the Christian Doctrine, that legally required and mandatory terms shall be read into contracts, is clearly narrowed for any terms or clauses the FAR Overhaul shifts from mandatory/required to either optional or malleable. Much of the FAR Overhaul’s revisions are at least intended to provide more flexibility, resulting in less easily identifiable mandatory content, but it remains unclear what the scope of that still-mandatory content will be in any particular contract and the degree to which it will remain judicially recognized as mandatory. Is it a clause that has been altered from the model in the FAR to any degree? To somewhat of a degree? To a significant degree? How is such measured? In word count? In dollar effect in an individual dispute?

Following this trend to its logical conclusion, the accrued benefits to contractors who know the actual contents of their contracts will likely lead to the government at some point recognizing it needs to more accurately and intentionally generate its contract documents. The government won’t be able to rely on benign clerical errors having no legal effect. At the same time, there is likely to be another action-forcing trend in which the increased flexibility and less mandatory nature of the FAR Overhaul’s revisions will potentially lead to less detectible, less visible fraud, collusion or other unjust enrichment by malicious actors usurping the flexibility and discretion for other than the government’s interests.

This trend, which one hopes would eventually be curbed in some way, may or may not temporally align with the pressure from legitimate but unintended benefits to savvy contractors created by the less mandatory nature of the FAR Overhaul. Either way, there will eventually be an increased administrative burden to government personnel to have contract documents actually say what a wise and prudent steward of taxpayer money intended to be in them. These increased clerical and administrative burdens  would result in the exact opposite of the FAR Overhaul’s stated streamlined and speedy intent unless some other means to avoid erroneously drafted contract documents is devised.

Perhaps the Court of Federal Claims, Boards of Contract Appeals, or appellate courts will adjust the Christian Doctrine to account for the FAR Overhaul’s increased flexibility, or, as ABA publications have argued, abandon completely the practice of “reading in” clauses that bureaucratic inefficiencies inadvertently omit. Automation and artificial intelligence could also address the issue, but the FAR Overhaul’s encouragement to “use sound business judgment” also limits how much such automation tools can meaningfully participate in accurately documenting bespoke and highly flexible results that assume a level of human understanding and intuition that only the most seasoned and dedicated COs possess.

The solid state to be reached remains unclear, but the irresistible force of the FAR Overhaul’s shift to more flexibility and discretion is going to meet the unmovable obstacle of the bureaucratic realities of the Federal procurement system.