Law Commons^™

Sign Or Die: The Threat Of Imminent Physical Harm And The Doctrine Of Duress In Contract Law, Daniel P. O'Gorman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Of Brutal Murder And Transcendental Sovereignty: The Meaning Of Vested Private Rights, Adam J. Macleod

Faculty Articles

The idea of vested private rights is divisive; it divides those who practice law from those who teach and think about law. On one side of the divide, practicing lawyers act as though (at least some) rights exist and exert binding obligations upon private persons and government officials, such that once vested, the rights cannot be taken away or retrospectively altered. Lawyers convey estates in property, negotiate contracts, and write and send demand letters on the supposition that they are specifying and vindicating rights, which are rights not as a result of a judgment by a court in a subsequent …

What If Fiduciary Obligations Are Like Contractual Ones?, Gregory Klass

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay, to appear in Contract, Status, and Fiduciary Law (Miller & Gold, 2016), explores three ways fiduciary obligations might be like contractual ones: in the methods lawmakers use or should use to determine the content of the obligation; in the private voluntary acts that generate the obligation; and in the fact that the obligation is a default that parties have the power to alter. The thesis is that to the extent that these similarities exist, they are not especially revealing. Theorists who emphasize the similarities commonly treat contract law as a private power-conferring rule, then analogize the law of …

Parallel Contract, Aditi Bagchi

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article describes a new model of contract. In parallel contract, one party enters into a series of contracts with many similarly situated individuals on background terms that are presumptively identical. Parallel contracts depart from the classical model of contract in two fundamental ways. First, obligations are not robustly dyadic in that they are neither tailored to the two parties to a given agreement nor understood by those parties by way of communications with each other. Second, obligations are not fixed at a discrete moment of contract. Parallel contracts should be interpreted differently than agreements more consistent with the classic …

Echoes Of The Impact Of Webb V. Mcgowin On The Doctrine Of Consideration Under Contract Law: Some Reflections On The Decision On The Approach Of Its 75th Anniversary, Stephen J. Leacock

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Langdell Upside-Down: James Coolidge Carter And The Anticlassical Jurisprudence Of Anticodification, Lewis Grossman

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Reemergence Of Restitution: Theory And Practice In The Restatement (Third) Of Restitution, Chaim Saiman

Working Paper Series

The ALI’s Restatement (Third) of Restitution provides one of the most interesting expressions of contemporary legal conceptualism. This paper explores the theory and practice of post-realist conceptualism through a review and critique of the Restatement. At the theoretical level, the paper develops a typology of different forms of conceptualism, and shows that the Restatement has more in common with the high formalism of the nineteenth century than with contemporary modes of private law discourse. At the level of substantive doctrine, the paper explains why labels in fact make a difference, and assesses which recoveries are more (and less) likely under …

Formalism In American Contract Law: Classical And Contemporary, Mark L. Movsesian

Faculty Publications

It is a universally acknowledged truth that we live in a formalist era—at least when it comes to American contract law. Much more than the jurisprudence of a generation ago, today's cutting-edge work in American contract scholarship values the formalist virtues of bright-line rules, objective interpretation, and party autonomy. Policing bargains for substantive fairness seems more and more an outdated notion. Courts, it is thought, should refrain from interfering with market exchanges. Private arbitration has displaced courts in the context of many traditional contract disputes. Even adhesion contracts find their defenders, much to the chagrin of communitarian scholars.

This is …

Rediscovering Williston, Mark L. Movsesian

Faculty Publications

This Article is an intellectual history of classical contracts scholar Samuel Williston. Professor Movsesian argues that the conventional account of Williston's jurisprudence presents an incomplete and distorted picture. While much of Williston's work can strike a contemporary reader as arid and conceptual, there are strong elements of pragmatism as well. Williston insists that doctrine be justified in terms of real-world consequences, maintains that rules can have only presumptive force, and offers institutional explanations for judicial restraint. As a result, his scholarship shares more in common with today's new formalism than commonly supposed. Even the under-theorized quality of Williston's scholarship—to contemporary …

Regret And Contract "Science", Peter A. Alces

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Reconsidering The Employment Contract Exclusion In Section 1 Of The Federal Arbitration Act: Correcting The Judiciary's Failure Of Statutory Vision, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

The Federal Arbitration Act (the Act), seeks to eliminate centuries of perceived judicial hostility toward arbitration agreements. The Act made written arbitration agreements involving interstate commerce specifically enforceable. It also provided a procedural structure for enforcing awards, which were protected through deferential judicial review. The Act intended to have a wide reach, employing a broad definition of commerce that has presumably grown in breadth along with the expansion of judicial notions of commerce. Although courts applied the Act in tentative and cautious fashion until the 1960's, arbitration gained momentum during the 1970's and the 1980's. Despite growing judicial enthusiasm for …

The "Nexus Of Contracts" Corporation: A Critical Appraisal, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Tentative Emergence Of Student Power In The United States, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.