Law Commons^™

Langdell And The Foundation Of Classical Contract Law, Daniel P. O'Gorman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Comment On Colla And Gulati, Cheeky Contracting, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan

All Faculty Scholarship

Colla and Gulati have identified a moment of disequilibrium in contract law and practice that tests the comfortable assumptions and taxonomies of contracts scholars. The dispute seems to pit the parties’ “real deal” against the paper deal, with attorneys for the creditors bewildered at Argentina’s novel and aggressive reading of its obligations. The focus of this commentary is, basically: How cheeky is cheeky?

Langdell And The Foundation Of Classical Contract Law, Daniel P. O’Gorman

Cleveland State Law Review

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, scholars seeking to bring order to the common law developed what has since become known as classical contract law. Its leading architects were Christopher Columbus Langdell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Samuel Williston, and their efforts involved seeking to provide an objective foundation for contract law. Any idea, however, that these three worked in coordination to create classical contract law would be mistaken. Holmes is considered a relentless critic of Langdell, and even Williston distanced himself from Langdell. This Article identifies in what ways Holmes and Williston differed from Langdell in their …

Rules Of Regularity: An Empirical Quest For Commercial Certainty In Arbitration, Cornelis J.W. Baaij

William & Mary Business Law Review

The U.S. Supreme Court justifies the broad enforceability of arbitration agreements with the notion that arbitration expands parties' autonomy to contract for an efficient alternative to court proceedings. Unfortunately, the current practice of both domestic and cross-border commercial arbitration does not fully live up to these expectations. It is crucial to both autonomy and efficiency theories of contract law that adjudicatory decision-making is predictable so parties can tailor their contracts accordingly. However, commercial arbitration's prevailing culture of confidentiality and lack of stare decisis diminishes commercial certainty. To bring the reality of commercial arbitration closer to the Supreme Court's reasoning, this …

Is The Biggest Offer The Best Offer?, Alyssa Croft

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

Many people strive to be professional athletes because of the respect and accomplishment it receives. You make a lot of money, it can be glamorous, you are in commercials and magazines, and sometimes even movies. However, there are some things people do not think about when it comes to professional athletes. One of the biggest is taxation! There are so many different things athletes must think about and do because of taxes so they can take home the most amount of money possible. Athletes must be careful about who they hire to help them with their taxes because they want …

If Past Is Prologue, Then The Future Is Bleak: Contracts, Covid–19, And The Changed Circumstances Doctrines, Danielle K. Hart

Texas A&M Law Review

At the heart of most of the systemic problems currently confronting individuals and businesses as a result of the COVID–19 pandemic is quite literally a contract. Housing. Insurance. Food. Health care. Child care. Employment. Manufacturing. Construction. Supply chains. You name it. Contracts are implicated everywhere. So make no mistake: How contract law addresses these ostensibly private contracts will have profound social consequences. If the past really is prologue, then the future is indeed bleak. The empirical study conducted for this Article establishes what the conventional wisdom has claimed for the last 70 years. More specifically, the empirical study here shows …

The New Bailments, Danielle D’Onfro

Washington Law Review

The rise of cloud computing has dramatically changed how consumers and firms store their belongings. Property that owners once managed directly now exists primarily on infrastructure maintained by intermediaries. Consumers entrust their photos to Apple instead of scrapbooks; businesses put their documents on Amazon’s servers instead of in file cabinets; seemingly everything runs in the cloud. Were these belongings tangible, the relationship between owner and intermediary would be governed by the common-law doctrine of bailment. Bailments are mandatory relationships formed when one party entrusts their property to another. Within this relationship, the bailees owe the bailors a duty of care …

Misreading Menetti: The Case Does Not Help You Avoid Liability For Your Own Fraud, Val D. Ricks

St. Mary's Law Journal

Several decades ago, an incorrect legal idea surfaced in Texas jurisprudence: that business entity actors are immune from liability for fraud that they themselves commit, as if the entity is solely responsible. Though the Supreme Court of Texas has rejected that result several times, it keeps coming back. The most recent manifestation is as a construction of Texas’s unique veil-piercing statute. Many lawyers have suggested that this view of the veil-piercing statute originated in Menetti v. Chavers, a San Antonio Court of Appeals case decided in 1998. Menetti has in fact played a prominent role in the movement to …

Leases As Forms, David A. Hoffman, Anton Strezhnev

All Faculty Scholarship

We offer the first large scale descriptive study of residential leases, based on a dataset of ~170,000 residential leases filed in support of over ~200,000 Philadelphia eviction proceedings from 2005 through 2019. These leases are highly likely to contain unenforceable terms, and their pro-landlord tilt has increased sharply over time. Matching leases with individual tenant characteristics, we show that unlawful terms are surprisingly likely to be associated with more expensive leaseholds in richer, whiter parts of the city. This result is linked to landlords' growing adoption of shared forms, originally created by non-profit landlord associations, and more recently available online …

New York's Requirements For Contractual Definiteness With Application To The Formation Of Investment Vehicles, Royce De R. Barondes

Faculty Publications

A review of 82 modern New York cases reveals an unexpected frequency of authority requiring contractual definiteness as to what may reasonably appear to be minor terms.
Illustrative are cases holding inadequately definite ordinary ways preliminary agreements may express compensation on a percentage of net basis. Other unexpected authority (i) is less willing than expected to allow subsequent actions to provide sufficient definiteness to initially indefinite agreements and (ii) denies the enforceability of confidentiality provisions and a right of first refusal.
The survey includes some unexpected support for contracts specifying a plausibly material portion of the consideration with inadequate definiteness …

When Binding Doesn't Really Mean Binding: The Early Decision College Application, Jean Steadman

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lowering The Stakes Of The Employment Contract, Aditi Bagchi

Faculty Scholarship

Every country has to make hard choices about the distribution of entitlements. But employers control the entitlements that individual Americans enjoy to a far greater extent than those in other rich democracies. In this Essay, I argue that, in the absence of the political consensus necessary to deliver state solutions to political questions, employers here are assigned an exaggerated role in employees’ lives. Government incentives for and directives to employers have become a strategy of political deflection. The effect has been to raise the stakes of employment well beyond the scope of those terms and conditions that relate to attracting …

Contracts Without Courts Or Clans: How Business Networks Govern Exchange, Sadie Blanchard

Journal Articles

Legal scholars have long recognized the close-knit community as an alternative institution for supporting trade when contract law and trusted courts are unavailable. But recent research suggests that another option may be available: heterogeneous business networks. What’s interesting is that these networks lack features traditionally seen as essential to community-supported trade. In particular, they lack preexisting noncommercial social ties that allow reliable and trusted information to spread at low cost, make exiting the network difficult, and enable coordinated sanctioning of cheaters. As a result, some leading scholars doubt that these networks are doing the work of sustaining cooperation. This Article …

The New Bailments, Danielle D'Onfro

Scholarship@WashULaw

The rise of cloud computing has dramatically changed how consumers and firms store their belongings. Property that owners once managed directly now exists primarily on infrastructure maintained by intermediaries. Consumers entrust their photos to Apple instead of scrapbooks; businesses put their documents on Amazon’s servers instead of in file cabinets; seemingly everything runs in the cloud. Were these belongings tangible, the relationship between owner and intermediary would be governed by the common-law doctrine of bailment. Bailments are mandatory relationships formed when one party entrusts their property to another. Within this relationship, the bailees owe the bailors a duty of care …

But We Didn’T Agree To That!: Why Class Proceedings Should Not Be Implied From Silent Or Ambiguous Arbitration Clauses After Lamps Plus, Inc. V. Varela, Andrea Demelo Laprade

Catholic University Law Review

The application of class arbitrability when a contract is silent on the matter remains a mystery. The Supreme Court has not clarified its stance on class arbitrability and preemptive effects of the Federal Arbitration Act on state law when applied to determine if class arbitrability is available. The purpose of this Paper is to address how the Lamps Plus v. Varela decision created more confusion about the question of class arbitrability. It argues that the failure to address the particulars of the availability of class arbitration will perpetuate litigation on this issue. This Paper suggests that the FAA’s purpose supports …

Alex Lyon & Son, Sales Managers & Auctioneers V. Leach: Auction Contracts, Bidder Qualifications, Offer And Acceptance, Waiver, And The Fallacy Of Treating All Bidders The Same, George A. Michak

West Virginia Law Review Online

In Alex Lyon & Son, Sales Managers & Auctioneers v. Leach, 844 S.E.2d 120 (W. Va. 2020), the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia grappled with the contractual relationships among participants in an auction transaction and rendered an opinion that (i) misstates and misaligns the rights and obligations among auctioneers, sellers, bidders, and buyers, (ii) impedes the ability of an auctioneer to reasonably control the conduct of an auction, and (iii) threatens to artificially circumscribe the prerogative of sellers and auctioneers to assume greater risks relative to certain bidders in an effort to expand the bidder pool in …

Towards Cnl-Based Verbalization Of Computational Contracts, Inari Listenmaa, Maryam Hanafiah, Regina Cheong, Andreas Kallberg

Centre for Computational Law

We present a CNL, which is a component of L4, a domain-specific programming language for drafting laws and contracts. Along with formal verification, L4’s core functionalities include natural language generation. We present the NLG pipeline and an interactive process for ambiguity resolution.

Enforcing Outbound Forum Selection Clauses In State Court, John Coyle, Katherine Robinson

Indiana Law Journal

Forum selection clauses are a staple of modern business law. Parties agree, ex ante, on where they can sue one another and then rely on the courts to enforce these agreements. Although the number of contracts containing forum selection clauses has skyrocketed in recent years, there is a dearth of empirical information about enforcement practice at the state level. Are there any states that refuse to enforce them? How frequently are they enforced? Under what circumstances, if any, will these clauses be deemed unenforceable? The existing literature provides few answers to these questions.

This Article aims to fill that gap. …

Cartoon Contracts And The Proactive Visualization Of Law, Michael D. Murray

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Contracts have always relied on text first, foremost, and usually exclusively. Yet, this approach leaves many users of contracts in the dark as to the actual meaning of the transactional documents and instruments they enter into. The average contract routinely uses language that only lawyers, law-trained readers, and highly literate persons can truly understand. There is a movement in the law in the United States and many other nations called the visualization of law movement that attempts to bridge these gaps in contractual communication by using highly visual instruments. In appropriate circumstances, even cartoons and comic book forms of sequential …

Contract Design When Relationship-Specific Investment Produces Asymmetric Information, Albert H. Choi, George Triantis

Articles

Under conventional contract theory, contracts may be efficient by protecting relationship specific investment from holdup in subsequent (re)negotiation over terms of trade. This paper demonstrates a different problem when specific investment also provides significant private information to the investing party. This is fairly common: for example, a manufacturer invests to learn about its buyer's idiosyncratic needs or a collaborator invests to learn about a joint venture. We show how such private information can lead to subsequent bargaining failure and suboptimal ex ante relationship-specific investment. We also show that this inefficiency is worse if the parties enter into a binding and …

Independent Craft Breweries Struggle Under Distribution Laws That Create A Power Imbalance In Favor Of Wholesalers, Daniel Croxall

William & Mary Business Law Review

Independent craft breweries are facing historic challenges under the COVID-19 pandemic. To make matters worse, many states prohibit a brewery from terminating a distribution contract with a wholesaler absent statutorily defined “good cause,” which typically means fraud, bankruptcy, or other illegal conduct. In this context, lagging sales or poor distribution performance are not grounds for a brewery to terminate a distribution contract. This means that it is nearly impossible, legally or financially, for an independent craft brewery to terminate a distribution contract with an unsatisfactory wholesaler. In essence, states have statutorily tipped the balance of power in favor of distributors …

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.

Not Pictured: Minnesota’S Disfavor Toward Forfeitures—Capistrant V. Lifetouch Nat’L Sch. Studios, Inc., 916 N.W.2d 23 (Minn. 2018)., Madalyn Elmquist

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Oliver Wendell Holmes's Theory Of Contract Law At The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Daniel P. O'Gorman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Error-Resilient Consumer Contracts, Danielle D'Onfro

Scholarship@WashULaw

When firms contracting with consumers make mistakes, people get hurt. Inaccurate billing, misapplied payments, and similar problems push lucky consumers into kafkaesqe customer-service queues and unlucky ones off the financial cliff. Despite significant regulatory interventions, firms contracting with consumers continue to struggle to accurately bill customers, update accounts, and process payments. Firms largely rely on technology, especially databases and software, to discharge these servicing obligations. This technology must accommodate firms’ innovations in their contracts, shifting regulations, and unpredictable consumer behavior. Given the complexity of servicing, the technology will inevitably produce mistakes even when firms invest in technology. When firms skimp …

Arthur Linton Corbin, Gregory Klass

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This chapter on Arthur Linton Corbin will appear in the forthcoming collection, Scholars of Contract Law. The chapter provides a brief summary of Corbin’s life, then discusses five topics: Corbin’s Socratic approach to the classroom and his introduction of the caselaw method at Yale; Corbin’s analytic approach, which was inspired by Hohfeld and is illustrated by Corbin’s definitions of “contract” and “consideration”; Corbin’s evolutionary theory of the common law, his understanding of the relationship between law and social mores, and his insistence that legal rules always be treated as mere “working rules”; Corbin’s occasional appeal, despite his general aversion …

The New Decade Of Construction Contracts: Technological And Climate Considerations For Owners, Designers, And Builders, Geoffrey F. Palachuk

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental & Innovation Law

In the next decade, the construction industry faces two intertwined risks: implementation of new technologies and the impacts of climate change. Those overlapping risks will present both practical and legal issues for design professionals, developers, builders, legislators, and the public at large. Although the average participant in the construction industry may not think twice about the emergence or adoption of new technologies, or the effect of climate change on the completed project, those issues present nuanced legal implications. Construction projects and their contracts must adapt. While companies seek to implement new technologies, provide sustainable products, optimize project systems, and maximize …

Super-Statutory Contracting, Kristelia A. García

Washington Law Review

The conventional wisdom is that property rules induce more—and more efficient—contracting, and that when faced with rigid property rules, intellectual property owners will contract into more flexible liability rules. A series of recent, private copyright deals show some intellectual property owners doing just the opposite: faced with statutory liability rules, they are contracting for more protection than that dictated by law, something this Article calls “super-statutory contracting”—either by opting for a stronger, more tailored liability rule, or by contracting into property rule protection. Through a series of deal analyses, this Article explores this counterintuitive phenomenon, and updates seminal thinking on …

The Judicial Admissions Exception To The Statute Of Frauds: A Curiously Gradual Adoption, Wayne Barnes

Faculty Scholarship

The statute of frauds requires certain categories of contracts to be evidenced by a signed writing. The original purpose of the statute of frauds, indeed its titular purpose, is the prevention of the fraudulent assertion of a non-existent oral contract. Although a signed writing is the formal way in which to satisfy the statute of frauds, courts have long recognized various exceptions to the writing requirement which will be held to satisfy the statute absent a writing. The effect of such exceptions is that they constitute an alternative form of evidence for the presence of a contract. One such exception …

Incorporating Free, Prior And Informed Consent (Fpic) Into Investment Approval Processes, Kelly Dudine, Sam Szoke-Burke

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Investment approval processes are the gateway through which governments set the agenda for their country’s investment environment. Yet too often these processes fail to incorporate meaningful requirements regarding participation in decision-making by Indigenous and other affected communities, increasing the risk of under-performing and conflict-ridden investments.

Enabling meaningful participation by rights holders and obtaining and maintaining their Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) throughout different investment approval processes can help governments to fulfill their legal obligations, mitigate financial and political risk, and, ultimately, attract more sustainable land-based investments.

Featuring concrete guidance and drawing on case studies from Kenya, Liberia, Mexico, Peru, …