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Full-Text Articles in Law
Agency: Married Women Traders Of Nantucket, 1765-1865, Mary L. Heen
Agency: Married Women Traders Of Nantucket, 1765-1865, Mary L. Heen
Law Faculty Publications
Before the enactment of separate property and contract rights for married women, generations of married women in seaport cities and towns conducted business as merchants, traders and shopkeepers. The first part of this article shows how private law facilitated their business activities through traditional agency law, the use of powers of attorney, trade accounts and family business networks. These arrangements, largely hidden from public view in family papers, letters, and diaries, permitted married women to enter into contracts, to buy and sell property, and to appear in court. Private law, like equity, thus provided a more flexible alternative to the …
Contracts Mattered As Much As Copyrights, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz
Contracts Mattered As Much As Copyrights, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz
Articles
Scholars have begun to appreciate the fundamental role that contracts played in the development of copyrights. Contracts gave copyrights vitalilty. This article explores the network of book publishing contracts that formed the legal infrastructure for a pre-modern “internet” at the dawn of copyright law in Great Britain in the eighteenth century. Drawing on insights from archival research, the article shows how this network of copyright contracts advanced an important goal of copyright: the spread of ideas and information throughout all parts of society. Appreciating the historical significance of copyright contracts provides valuable context for modern debates about copyright policy. Indeed, …
Unframing Legal Reasoning: A Cyclical Theory Of Legal Evolution, Larry A. Dimatteo
Unframing Legal Reasoning: A Cyclical Theory Of Legal Evolution, Larry A. Dimatteo
UF Law Faculty Publications
This article draws from legal history to inform a part of legal theory. The legal history examination focuses on two theories of legal development - Henry Sumner Maine's "progression thesis" and Nathan Isaacs's "cycle theory." After examining these two theories of legal development, the analysis shifts to how legal history informs theories of legal reasoning. There are numerous long-standing debates on how "law" should be interpreted. These debates are replicated in the question of how "contracts" should be interpreted. Contract law and contract interpretation will be the focus in examining how history informs legal theory, and more specifically, legal reasoning. …
Contract Law And Fundamental Legal Conceptions: An Application Of Hohfeldian Terminology To Contract Doctrine, Daniel P. O'Gorman
Contract Law And Fundamental Legal Conceptions: An Application Of Hohfeldian Terminology To Contract Doctrine, Daniel P. O'Gorman
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Rise And Fall Of Unconscionability As The 'Law Of The Poor', Anne Fleming
The Rise And Fall Of Unconscionability As The 'Law Of The Poor', Anne Fleming
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
What happened to unconscionability? Here’s one version of the story: The doctrine of unconscionability experienced a brief resurgence in the mid-1960s at the hands of naive, left-liberal, activist judges, who used it to rewrite private consumer contracts according to their own sense of justice. These folks meant well, no doubt, much like present-day consumer protection crusaders who seek to ensure the “fairness” of financial products and services. But courts’ refusal to enforce terms they deemed "unconscionable” served only to increase the cost of doing business with low-income households. Judges ended up hurting the very people they were trying to help. …
Gambling, Commodity Speculation, And The 'Victorian Compromise', Joshua C. Tate
Gambling, Commodity Speculation, And The 'Victorian Compromise', Joshua C. Tate
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
This Essay examines two major strands of nineteenth-century jurisprudence related to gambling: Southern cases defining public and private space for the purpose of state gambling statutes, and Northern cases applying the intent to deliver test to speculative contracts. The Essay argues that both lines of cases reflect what Lawrence Friedman has termed the Victorian compromise: A strong official stance against immoral behavior is conjoined with de facto acceptance of many questionable practices, provided that they are conducted in a manner acceptable to the elite. The Essay concludes that nineteenth-century judges sought to preserve the semblance of a strict prohibition against …
Markets Overt, Voidable Titles, And Feckless Agents: Judges And Efficiency In The Antebellum Doctrine Of Good Faith Purchase, Harold R. Weinberg
Markets Overt, Voidable Titles, And Feckless Agents: Judges And Efficiency In The Antebellum Doctrine Of Good Faith Purchase, Harold R. Weinberg
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
In considering American common law doctrines shaped during the nineteenth century, commentators have advanced differing theories on the primary judicial criteria employed by judges. Recent studies have argued that these doctrines reflect a criterion of economic efficiency. This work has been criticized for its failure to explain why there seems to be a correlation between efficiency and these decision rules or why judges might have preferred efficiency over other decisional criteria. Other studies have proposed that many judicial doctrines announced before the Civil War were intended to facilitate or ratify major shifts in the distribution of social wealth. This article …
Book Review. Transcending Covenant And Debt, Morris S. Arnold
Book Review. Transcending Covenant And Debt, Morris S. Arnold
Articles by Maurer Faculty
No abstract provided.
What Is Consideration In The Anglo-American Law Of Contracts?, Hugh Evander Willis
What Is Consideration In The Anglo-American Law Of Contracts?, Hugh Evander Willis
Articles by Maurer Faculty
No abstract provided.