Law Commons^™

The Rise And Fall Of Unconscionability As The 'Law Of The Poor', Anne Fleming

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

What happened to unconscionability? Here’s one version of the story: The doctrine of unconscionability experienced a brief resurgence in the mid-1960s at the hands of naive, left-liberal, activist judges, who used it to rewrite private consumer contracts according to their own sense of justice. These folks meant well, no doubt, much like present-day consumer protection crusaders who seek to ensure the “fairness” of financial products and services. But courts’ refusal to enforce terms they deemed "unconscionable” served only to increase the cost of doing business with low-income households. Judges ended up hurting the very people they were trying to help. …

The Productive Tension Between Official And Unofficial Stories Of Fault In Contract Law, Martha M. Ertman

Faculty Scholarship

Officially Contract law ignores fault. However, an unofficial story complements the official one, and explains why fault occasionally slips into contract law through doctrines such as willful breach. This chapter of FAULT IN AMERICAN CONTRACT LAW (Omri Ben-Shahar & Ariel Porot, eds, Cambridge U. Press, forthcoming 2010) argues that the official and unofficial stories operate in productive tension to both facilitate ex ante planning and, when necessary, look backward at reasons for breach to reach a just result. The occasional presence of fault in contract law, in this view, represents merely one more instance of the common doctrinal pattern of …

Expectation Damages The Objective Theory Of Contracts And The Hairy Hand Case A Proposed Modification To The Effect Of Two Classical Contract Law Axioms In Cases Involving Contractual, Daniel P. O'Gorman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Invention Of Common Law Play Right, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

This Article explores playwrights' common law "play right." Since this conference celebrates the 300th birthday of the Statute of Anne, I begin in England in the 17th Century. I find no trace of a common law playwright's performance right in either the law or the customary practices surrounding 17th and 18th century English theatre. I argue that the nature and degree of royal supervision of theatre companies and performance during the period presented no occasion (and, indeed, left no opportunity) for such a right to arise. I discuss the impetus for Parliament's enactment of a performance right statute in 1833, …

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.

Coordinating In The Shadow Of The Law: Two Contextualized Tests Of The Focal Point Theory Of Legal Compliance, Richard H. Mcadams, Janice Nadler

Faculty Working Papers

In situations where people have an incentive to coordinate their behavior, law can provide a framework for understanding and predicting what others are likely to do. According to the focal point theory of expressive law, the law's articulation of a behavior can sometimes create self-fulfilling expectations that it will occur. Existing theories of legal compliance emphasize the effect of sanctions or legitimacy; we argue that, in addition to sanctions and legitimacy, law can also influence compliance simply by making one outcome salient. We tested this claim in two experiments where sanctions and legitimacy were held constant. Experiment 1 demonstrated that …

The Enduring Legacy Of Wood V. Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, James J. Fishman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

To mark the ninetieth anniversary of the decision, Pace University School of Law sponsored a Symposium, The Enduring Legacy of Wood v. Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, to reconsider the case and to appreciate the accomplishments of Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, who as Lucile, became one of the twentieth century's most innovative fashion designers. The Symposium brought together leading contracts scholars from as far away as Australia and England as well as experts on Lucile from the worlds of fashion, museums and fashion scholarship.

The Symposium examined legal issues raised by the decision through panels that focused upon: implication, interpretation and default terms; …

Gambling, Commodity Speculation, And The 'Victorian Compromise', Joshua C. Tate

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This Essay examines two major strands of nineteenth-century jurisprudence related to gambling: Southern cases defining public and private space for the purpose of state gambling statutes, and Northern cases applying the intent to deliver test to speculative contracts. The Essay argues that both lines of cases reflect what Lawrence Friedman has termed the Victorian compromise: A strong official stance against immoral behavior is conjoined with de facto acceptance of many questionable practices, provided that they are conducted in a manner acceptable to the elite. The Essay concludes that nineteenth-century judges sought to preserve the semblance of a strict prohibition against …

Williston As Conservative-Pragmatist, Mark L. Movsesian

Faculty Publications

In her pathbreaking article, "Restatement and Reform: A New Perspective on the Origins of the American Law Institute, Professor N.E.H. Hull rejects the conventional wisdom about the conservative, even reactionary, character of the First Restatements. The truth, she argues, is more subtle. The Restatements, and the larger ALI project of which they were a part, reflect the "'progressive-pragmatic"' worldview of the law professors most responsible for their creation. These professors were reformers. They rejected the formalism of earlier generations; for them, law was not a conceptual system but a practical tool for promoting beneficial social goals. They tempered their zeal …

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 Entrepreneur And The Theory Of The Modern Corporation, Charles R.T. O'Kelley

Scholarly Works

The foremost description of the classic entrepreneur, immediately prior to the Great Depression and now, was presented by Frank Knight in his seminal work, RISK, UNCERTAINTY, AND PROFIT. In this Article, I will explicate Knight's theory of the entrepreneur and show how it relates to both the Berle-Means Paradigm and the nexus-of-contracts theory of the corporation. My effort here is in part intellectual history and in part the tentative beginnings of a new positive account of the corporation. In the latter regard, this Article takes only the first step in what may prove a quite exhaustive effort to re-plow the …

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 …

Joseph Baxendale, James J. Fishman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The defendant in the great case of Hadley v. Baxendale is Joseph Baxendale, managing partner of Pickford and Co., the common carrier that delayed the delivery of the Hadley's shaft. Baxendale was named the defendant, because Pickfords was a partnership and did not incorporate until 1901. Joseph Baxendale was born in 1785, the son of a Lancastershire surgeon. In 1806, he moved to London, where he worked for a wholesale linen draper. Later, he became a partner in that firm, and developed the managerial and accounting skills that would serve him so well at Pickfords.

Foreword: Is Reliance Still Dead?, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

One thing I found out when I was a prosecutor is that you should never tell a police officer he cannot do something, for that just serves as an open invitation for him to do it. In recent years, I have learned a similar lesson about legal scholarship which I should probably keep to myself but won't. If you proclaim the existence of a scholarly "consensus," this is an open invitation for academics to try to demolish such a claim.

A Slave's Marriage: Dowry Or Deposit, Alan Watson

Scholarly Works

This articles examines the concept of dowry among marriage of slaves in ancient Rome.

The Evolution Of Law: The Roman System Of Contracts, Alan Watson

Scholarly Works

I have two aims in producing this paper. First, I wish to contribute to the general understanding of how and why law develops and explain the evolution of some very familiar legal institutions. Second, I wish to add to our knowledge of the history of Roman law, by producing a radically different view of the development of contracts, that is, I believe, both consistent with surviving textual data and plausible with regard to human behavior.

Contracts (1983 Annual Survey Of Michigan Law), Janete Findlater, Paula L. Ettelbrick

Law Faculty Research Publications

During the Survey period, the Michigan Supreme Court decided cases involving mutual mistake, the enforceability of a contractual limitation period, and termination of a licensing agreement. The court of appeals considered implied in fact contract theories, interpretation, the parol evidence rule, and claims for exemplary and mental distress damages for breach of contract. In addition, the court of appeals revisited rejection and acceptance under the Uniform Commercial Code, and decided several cases involving medical malpractice arbitration agreements.

Book Review. Transcending Covenant And Debt, Morris S. Arnold

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

What Is Consideration In The Anglo-American Law Of Contracts?, Hugh Evander Willis

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.