Law Commons^™

The Rise And Fall Of Promissory Estoppel Or Is Promissory Estoppel Really As Unsuccessful As Scholars Say It Is: A New Look At The Data, Juliet P. Kostritsky

Faculty Publications

This article makes important contributions to the field of empirical promissory estoppel scholarship. First it challenges recent empirical scholarship (by Professors Robert Hillman and Sidney De Long in the 1998 and 1997 Columbia and Wisconsin law reviews). Their scholarship had challenged the view of the vast majority of American Contracts scholarship by proclaiming promissory estoppel to be an unimportant doctrine based on low win rates of tried cases. My article challenges this new orthodoxy based on a comprehensive five year survey of cases. It concludes that it is too soon to announce the death of promissory estoppel and that promissory …

Two Cheers For Freedom Of Contract, Mark L. Movsesian

Faculty Publications

Once, they say, freedom of contract reigned in American law. Parties could make agreements on a wide variety of subjects and choose the terms they wished. Courts would refrain from questioning the substance of bargains and would ensure only that parties had observed the proper formalities. In interpretation, objectivity was paramount. Courts would seek to ascertain, not what the parties had intended, but what a reasonable observer would understand the parties' words to mean. Contract law was a series of abstractions informed by individual autonomy and judicial deference.

This world, a classical paradise of doctrines with sharp corners, began to …