Law Commons^™

The Contract Interpretation Policy Debate: A Primer, Joshua M. Silverstein

Faculty Scholarship

Contract interpretation is one of the most significant areas of commercial law. As a result, there is an extensive academic and judicial debate over the optimal method for construing agreements. Throughout this exchange, scholars and courts have advanced a wide array of conceptual, theoretical, and empirical arguments in support of the two primary schools of interpretation— textualism and contextualism—as well as various hybrid positions. This Essay is intended to serve as a primer on those arguments.

Contract Interpretation And The Parol Evidence Rule: Toward Conceptual Clarification, Joshua M. Silverstein

Faculty Scholarship

Contract interpretation is one of the most important topics in commercial law. Unfortunately, the law of interpretation is extraordinarily convoluted. In essentially every American state, the jurisprudence is riddled with inconsistency and ambiguity. This causes multiple problems. Contracting parties are forced to expend additional resources when negotiating and drafting agreements. Disputes over contractual meaning are more likely to end up in litigation. And courts make a greater number of errors in the interpretive process. Together, these impacts result in significant unfairness and undermine economic efficiency. Efforts to remedy the doctrinal incoherence are thus warranted.

The goal of this Article is …

Contract Interpretation Enforcement Costs: An Empirical Study Of Textualism Versus Contextualism Conducted Via The West Key Number System, Joshua M. Silverstein

Faculty Scholarship

This Article sets forth an empirical study of a central issue in the judicial and academic debate over the optimal method of contract interpretation: Whether “textualism” or “contextualism” best minimizes contract enforcement costs. The study measured enforcement costs in twelve ways. Under each of those measures, there was no statistically significant difference in the level of interpretation litigation between textualist and contextualist regimes. Accordingly, the study finds no support for either the textualist hypothesis that contextualism has higher enforcement costs or the contextualist counter-hypothesis that textualism has higher enforcement costs.

The study herein was conducted via the West Key Number …

Using The West Key Number System As A Data Collection And Coding Device For Empirical Legal Scholarship: Demonstrating The Method Via A Study Of Contract Interpretation, Joshua M. Silverstein

Faculty Scholarship

Empirical research is an increasingly important type of legal scholarship. Such research generally requires the collection and coding of large quantities of data. These tasks pose critical challenges for legal scholars. Most crucially, they are often resource-intensive. The primary purpose of this article is to explain how researchers can use the West Key Number System to dramatically streamline the process of data collection and coding. The article accomplishes this, in part, through a demonstration: it employs the Key Number System to conduct an empirical study of contract interpretation.

Contract interpretation is one of the most significant areas of commercial law. …

Contract Resurrected! Contract Formation: Common Law – Ucc – Cisg, Sarah Howard Jenkins

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Why Doctors Shouldn't Practice Law: The American Medical Association's Misdiagnosis Of Physician Non-Compete Clauses, Robert E. Steinbuch

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Contracting Out Of Article 2: Minimizing The Obligation Of Performance & Liability For Breach, Sarah Howard Jenkins

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Contracting Out Of The Ucc, Sarah Howard Jenkins

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Consequential Damages In Contracts For The International Sale Of Goods And The Legacy Of Hadley, Arthur Murphey

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.