Law Commons^™

Intent To Contract, Gregory Klass

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There is a remarkable difference between black-letter contract laws of the United States and England. In England, the existence of a contract is supposedly conditioned on the parties' intent to be legally bound, while section 21 of the Second Restatement of Contracts states that "[n]either real nor apparent intention that a promise be legally binding is essential to the formation of a contract." There are also differences within U.S. law on the issue. While section 21 describes courts' approach to most contracts, the parties' intent to contact can be a condition of validity of preliminary agreements, domestic agreements and social …

On Writ Of Certiorari To The United States Court Of Appeals For The Second Circuit, Stolt-Neilsen S.A., V. Animalfeed International, No. 08-1198 (U.S. Oct. 20, 2009), Cornelia T. Pillard

U.S. Supreme Court Briefs

No abstract provided.

A Conditional Intent To Perform, Gregory Klass

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The doctrine of promissory fraud holds that a contractual promise implicitly represents an intent to perform. A promisor’s conditional intent to perform poses a problem for that doctrine. It is clear that some undisclosed conditions on the promisor’s intent should result in liability for promissory fraud. Yet no promisor intends to perform come what may, so there is a sense in which all promisors conditionally intend to perform.

Building on Michael Bratman’s planning theory of intentions, this article provides a theoretical account of the distinction between “foreground” and “background” conditions on intentions in general and then explains why foreground conditions …

Commentary, Anna Gelpern

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Enforceable promises discourage lying, cheating, and stealing. Contracts that embody such promises shape institutions, distribute power, and organize markets. The Smith-King critique of elite empirical contracts scholarship reveals a field preoccupied with the first set of functions and barely interested in the second. I am loath to second-guess this view without empirical evidence of my own. Instead, I draw from it two sets of implications-one for the substantive study of contracts, the other for the relationship between contract theory and contract empiricism.