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Full-Text Articles in Law
Reconsidering Contractual Consent: Why We Shouldn't Worry Too Much About Boilerplate And Other Puzzles, Nathan B. Oman
Reconsidering Contractual Consent: Why We Shouldn't Worry Too Much About Boilerplate And Other Puzzles, Nathan B. Oman
Nathan B. Oman
Our theoretical approaches to contract law have dramatically over-estimated the importance of voluntary consent. The central thesis of this article is that voluntary consent plays at best a secondary role in the normative justification of contract law. Rather, contract law should be seen as part of an evolutionary process of finding solutions to problems of social organization in markets. Like natural evolution, this process depends on variation and feedback. Unlike natural evolution, both the variation and the feedback mechanisms are products of human invention. On this theory, consent serves two roles in contract law. First, consent makes freedom of contract …
Promise And Private Law, Nathan B. Oman
Promise And Private Law, Nathan B. Oman
Nathan B. Oman
This essay was part of a symposium on the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of Charles Fried's Contract as Promise and revisits Fried's theory in light of two developments in the private-law scholarship: the rise of corrective justice and civil-recourse theories. The structural features that motivate these theories-the bilateralism of damages and the private standing of plaintiffs-are both elements of the law of contracts that Contract as Promise sets out to explain. I begin with the issue of bilateralism. Remedies--in particular the defense of expectation damages--occupy much of Fried's attention in Contract as Promise, and he insists that this particular …
Unity And Pluralism In Contract Law, Nathan B. Oman
Unity And Pluralism In Contract Law, Nathan B. Oman
Nathan B. Oman
No abstract provided.
The Need For A Law Of Church And Market, Nathan B. Oman
The Need For A Law Of Church And Market, Nathan B. Oman
Nathan B. Oman
This Essay uses Helfand and Richman’s fine article to raise the question of the law of church and market. In Part I, I argue that the question of religion’s proper relationship to the market is more than simply another aspect of the church-state debates. Rather, it is a topic deserving explicit reflection in its own right. In Part II, I argue that Helfand and Richman demonstrate the danger of creating the law of church and market by accident. Courts and legislators do this when they resolve questions religious commerce poses by applying legal theories developed without any thought for the …
The Failure Of Economic Interpretations Of The Law Of Contact Damages, Nathan B. Oman
The Failure Of Economic Interpretations Of The Law Of Contact Damages, Nathan B. Oman
Nathan B. Oman
The law of contracts is complex but remarkably stable. What we lack is a widely accepted interpretation of that law as embodying a coherent set of normative choices. Some scholars have suggested that either economic efficiency or personal autonomy provide unifying principles of contract law. These two approaches, however, seem incommensurable, which suggests that we must reject at least one of them in order to have a coherent theory. This Article dissents from this view and has a simple thesis: Economic accounts of the current doctrine governing contract damages have failed, but efficiency arguments remain key to any adequate theory …
Markets As A Moral Foundation For Contract Law, Nathan B. Oman
Markets As A Moral Foundation For Contract Law, Nathan B. Oman
Nathan B. Oman
No abstract provided.
Introductory Remarks: Contract Law And Morality, Nathan B. Oman
Introductory Remarks: Contract Law And Morality, Nathan B. Oman
Nathan B. Oman
No abstract provided.
Indiana And Doux Commerce, Nathan B. Oman
Corporations And Autonomy Theories Of Contract: A Critique Of The New Lex Mercatoria, Nathan B. Oman
Corporations And Autonomy Theories Of Contract: A Critique Of The New Lex Mercatoria, Nathan B. Oman
Nathan B. Oman
One of the central problems of contracts jurisprudence is the conflict between autonomy theories of contract and efficiency theories of contract. One approach to solving this conflict is to argue that in the realm of contracts between corporations, autonomy theories have nothing to say because corporations are not real people with whose autonomy we need to be concerned. While apparently powerful, this argument ultimately fails because it implicitly assumes theories of the corporation at odds with economic theories of law. Economics, in turn, offers a vision of the firm that is quite hospitable to autonomy theories of contract. The failure …
A Pragmatic Defense Of Contract Law, Nathan B. Oman
A Pragmatic Defense Of Contract Law, Nathan B. Oman
Nathan B. Oman
No abstract provided.