Contracts Commons^™

Order On Defendant's Motion To Dismiss (Mary Ann Digan Et Al.), Elizabeth E. Long

Georgia Business Court Opinions

No abstract provided.

Order On Defendants' Motion For Partial Summary Judgment (North Star Jefferson, Llc Et Al.), Elizabeth E. Long

Georgia Business Court Opinions

No abstract provided.

Order On Georgia-Pacific's Motion And Memorandum To Exclude Damages (Ezgreen Assoc. Llc), John J. Goger

Georgia Business Court Opinions

No abstract provided.

Mandatory Rules And Default Rules In Insurance Contracts, Tom Baker, Kyle D. Logue

Law & Economics Working Papers

The economic analysis of contract law can organized around two general questions: (1) what are the efficient or welfare-maximizing substantive rules of contract law; and (2) once those rules have been identified, when if ever should they be made mandatory and when should they be merely “default rules” that the parties can contract around if they wish? Much of contract theory over the past twenty years has been devoted to developing answers to those two questions. The same two questions can be posed with respect to the rules of insurance law. Although previous scholars have examined particular substantive doctrines of …

Private Copyright Reform, Kristelia A. García

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The government is not the only player in copyright reform, and perhaps not even the most important. Left to free market negotiation, risk averse licensors and licensees are contracting around the statutory license for certain types of copyright-protected content, and achieving greater efficiency via private ordering. This emerging phenomenon, herein termed “private copyright reform,” presents both adverse selection and distributive justice concerns: first, circumvention of the statutory license goes against legislative intent by allowing for the reduction, and even elimination, of statutorily mandated royalties owed to non-parties. In addition, when presented without full term disclosure, privately determined royalty rates can …

Mining Contracts: How To Read And Understand Them, International Senior Lawyers Project, Openoil, Revenue Watch Institute-Natural Resource Governance Institue, Vale Columbia Center On Sustainable International Investment

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Books

In December 2013, a diverse group of 14 experts from Africa, Asia, North and South America, and Europe worked together for five days to produce a user-friendly guide in English and in French on "Mining Contracts: How to Read and Understand Them," to help policy makers, civil society, citizens, and the media understand the often complex and opaque terms of mining contracts. With increasing calls for contract transparency – and the growing recognition of the importance of the terms of contracts for resource-rich countries – this book explains in layman’s terms the principal features of a contract, compares different approaches …

Cancelation Of High Frequency Trades: Clearly Erroneous Or Just A Mistake?, Andrew D. Getsinger

Bocconi Legal Papers

This paper focuses on an often overlooked and obscure element of the current marketplace: erroneous transactions. Historically, before the markets’ heavy reliance on automated systems, erroneous transactions were only rescindable if both parties agreed to rescind — a mutual mistake approach. Today, however, Exchanges have incorporated a dispute process to trade rescission, where members petition to the Exchange (the third-party) for cancelation of a bad-trade. A trade will then be nullified by the Exchange, if the Exchange finds that trade to be “clearly erroneous” or to have been made in “obvious error.” This dispute-process is called the “clearly erroneous execution” …

Contract As Pattern Language, Erik F. Gerding

Erik F. Gerding

Christopher Alexander’s architectural theory of a "pattern language" influenced the development of object-oriented computer programming. This pattern language framework also explains the design of legal contracts. Moreover, the pattern language rubric explains how legal agreements interlock to create complex transactions and how transactions interconnect to create markets. This pattern language framework helps account for evidence, including from the global financial crisis, of failures in modern contract design.

A pattern represents an encapsulated conceptual solution to a recurring design problem. Patterns save architects and designers from having to reinvent the wheel; they can use solutions that evolved over time to address …

Cases And Controversies: Some Things To Do With Contracts Cases, Charles L. Knapp

Washington Law Review

As a co-author of one of the two dozen or more currently-in-print Contracts casebooks, I obviously have both a point of view about, and a personal stake in, the survival of this particular method of instruction. Whether the legal casebook—or any other book, in the form of bound sheets of paper—will remain a part of our academic culture much longer is clearly up for grabs, however. Electronic records have so many advantages over the printed page that, at least for many purposes, they will surely become the dominant form of preserving, retrieving, and transmitting information, if indeed they are not …

The Perspective Of Law On Contract, Aditi Bagchi

Washington Law Review

What is the perspective of law on contract? This Article will consider two dimensions of the perspective we offer students. Part I will consider how we present the nature of contract law. That is, it will explore the extent to which traditional methods of teaching unduly underplay indeterminacy and disagreement. In that Part I distinguish between inductive and deductive legal reasoning and suggest we may give short shrift to the former in teaching. Part II will consider the attitude of the law toward contract as a social practice. Here I distinguish between internal and external perspectives on law and suggest …

Unilateral Reordering In The Reel World, Jake Linford

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Case Comment: A New Framework For The Implication Of Terms In Fact, Yihan Goh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In Sembcorp Marine Ltd v PPL Holdings Pte Ltd the Singapore Court of Appeal once again reaffirmed the Singapore courts’ rejection of the approach adopted by Lord Hoffmann in Attorney General of Belize v Belize Telecom Ltd which characterised the implication of a term in fact as a process of contractual interpretation. What may be of interest to practitioners and academics of common law jurisdictions wrestling with the implications of the Belize approach is the Court of Appeal’s prescription of ‘a three-step process’ for the implication of terms in fact, which is accompanied by an in-depth discussion of various conceptual …

Visual Clarity In Contract Drafting, Karin Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

No abstract provided.

Contract Texts, Contract Teaching, Contract Law: Comment On Lawrence Cunningham, Contracts In The Real World, Brian H. Bix

Washington Law Review

Lawrence Cunningham’s Contracts in the Real World offers a good starting place for necessary conversations about how contract law should be taught, and, more generally, for when and how cases—in summary form or in longer excerpts—are useful in teaching the law. This Article tries to offer some reasons for thinking that their prevalence may reflect important truths about contract law in particular and law and legal education in general.

Reflections On Contracts In The Real World: History, Currency, Context, And Other Values, Lawrence A. Cunningham

Washington Law Review

It is gratifying to read that this symposium issue of the Washington Law Review was stimulated by Contracts in the Real World. Thanks to the editors for the opportunity to ruminate on the place of the book’s approach—stressing context through stories—in the tradition of contracts pedagogy. To that end, Part I first pinpoints relevant historical milestones in the field of contracts casebooks. Building on that historical grounding, Part II then highlights the values of currency and context that the stories approach epitomizes. Turning more speculative, Part III considers the value of this approach from the perspective of the purpose …

Contract Stories: Importance Of The Contextual Approach To Law, Larry A. Dimatteo

Washington Law Review

How law is taught is at the center of the debate over the need to change legal education to better prepare students for a difficult and changing marketplace for legal services. This Article analyzes the benefits of using “stories” to teach law. The stories to be discussed relate to contract law: this Article asks whether they can be used to improve the method and content of teaching law. The ruminations offered on teaching contract law, however, are also relevant to teaching other core, first-year law courses.

Contract As Pattern Language, Erik F. Gerding

Washington Law Review

This essay examines how patterns enable the transformation of contractual provisions into contracts, contracts into transactions, and transactions into markets. Although contract design patterns are broader than contract boilerplate (as described in Part II.C. below), some of the extensive legal scholarship on boilerplate19 helps explain how contract patterns generate agreements, transactions, and markets. The work of Henry Smith on the modularity of contract boilerplate proves particularly useful in this regard. Contract patterns perform several functions. Contract patterns break complex problems and bargains into components. Attorneys can then repeatedly apply these particular solutions to similar problems. Patterns also serve as heuristics …

Unilateral Reordering In The Reel World, Jake Linford

Washington Law Review

Professor Larry Cunningham’s new book, Contracts in the Real World, demonstrates that there is much to learn about contract law from a few well-chosen stories. The goal of this Essay is to provide a similar service, relying on stories gleaned from movies and television—contracts in the “reel world,” so to speak—to illustrate and then undermine the traditional stories told about contract formation and modification. We can learn much from the scenes discussed herein about how consumers might be led to think contracts are formed, and perhaps misled about the certainty contracts provide.

Unpopular Contracts And Why They Matter: Burying Langdell And Enlivening Students, Jennifer S. Taub

Washington Law Review

Thus, the purpose of this piece is to provide an alternative: a transformation of how Contracts is taught in law schools so that we meet a variety of educational objectives. This is less of a prescription than it is a resolution made in the public sphere: a promise to shake things up in my own classroom and thus hopefully do better by students in the long run. It is also the beginning of a search to benchmark against the practices of others, and to seek input from those who have already begun to transform their Contracts teaching materials and methods. …

Liabilities For Design Defects In A Collaborative, Integrated, Digital Age, Juan Jonnathan Bravo, Jaime Gray

Jonnathan Bravo Venegas

The purpose of this article is to address the new challenges concerning liabilities arising from errors or defects in construction projects that employ new design methods and techniques such as BIM and new collaborative project delivery systems. Following an examination of some relevant legal issues, with particular emphasis on the Peruvian Civil Code, the authors propose that parties should clearly establish in their agreements the scope of work or services and the liability each of them should bear.

La Dialettica Di Principî E Regole Nel Diritto Europeo Deicontratti: Dal Pecl Al Cesl, E Oltre, Pietro Sirena

Pietro Sirena

The article aims at challenging the current definitions of the principles of law from the point of view of the European legal system. Its multi-levelled structure and its constitutional architecture, strongly based on the subsidiarity of the European Union, call for a new understanding of its principles. The authors of the article assume that the principles of European law are to be identified with the common core of the national legal orders, i.e. with the ius commune Europaeum, and with the constitutional condition of its application by the European Court of Justice. Such principles should be obtained through the critical …

Vulnerable Populations And Transformative Law Teaching: A Critical Reader, Chapter 6 - Vulnerability In Contracting: Teaching First-Year Law Students About Inequality And Its Consequences, Deborah Post, Deborah Zalesne

Deborah W. Post

Traditional legal pedagogy fails to demonstrate the relationship of contract to the subordination of vulnerable populations. As a result, students rarely see the complex web of interrelationships where economic activity takes place or the legal regime that maintains it. Students are not taught how to interrogate the discourse or dismantle the systems and structures that oppress subordinated communities. This Essay describes a technique that we have developed to help students learn the meaning of law and its cultural, social, and structural significance. The traditional framing of the study of contract doctrine as one that is objective, neutral, and fair avoids …

Order On Nov. 1, 2013 Hearing (Michael D. Sullivan), Elizabeth E. Long

Georgia Business Court Opinions

No abstract provided.

Order On Nov. 14, 2013 Hearing (United Community Bank), John J. Goger

Georgia Business Court Opinions

No abstract provided.

Soft Law And The Principle Of Fair And Equitable Decisionmaking In International Contract Arbitration, Larry Dimatteo

Larry A DiMatteo

This article provides a survey of the special relationship between international commercial arbitration and soft law instruments. It briefly traces the historical roots of the lex mercatoria to its present enunciation in the Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) and the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts. It discusses the characteristic of the hardness and softness of laws in an international commercial law context. The CISG is studied not only as a hard law, but also as an example of soft law. The affinity between soft law and international commercial arbitration is explored, as well as …

Forward: Advances In The Behavioral Analysis Of Law: Markets, Institutions, And Contracts, Avishalom Tor

Avishalom Tor

No abstract provided.

Terra Incognita: Un Aspecto Poco Estudiado De La Denominada Acción Pauliana, Fort Ninamancco Cordova

Fort Ninamancco Cordova

No abstract provided.

An Independent Contractor Speaks His Mind: Can He Lose His Government Contract? An Analysis Of Heiser V. Umbehr, Barbara J. Fick

Barbara J. Fick

This article previews the Supreme Court case Heiser v. Umbehr, 515 U.S. 1172 (1995). The author expected the Court to consider whether, and to what extent, a governmental unit can take into account an independent contractor's poltical speech in making decisions regarding the award or termination of government contracts.

Le Pattuizioni Di Co-Vendita Quali Limiti Alla Circolazione Di Azioni E Quote, Valerio Sangiovanni

Valerio Sangiovanni

No abstract provided.

Duty In The Litigation-Investment Agreement: The Choice Between Tort And Contract Norms When The Deal Breaks Down, Anthony J. Sebok, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Litigation investment, which is also known as “litigation finance” or “third party litigation finance,” has grown in importance in many common law and civilian legal systems and has come to the United States as well. While many questions remain about both legality and social desirability of litigation finance, this paper starts with the assumption that the practice will become widespread in the US and explores the obligations of the parties to the litigation finance contract.

The first part of the article uses an example to illustrate the risks imposed by one of the other party on the other which should …