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Contract Interpretation Enforcement Costs: An Empirical Study Of Textualism Versus Contextualism Conducted Via The West Key Number System, Joshua M. Silverstein
Contract Interpretation Enforcement Costs: An Empirical Study Of Textualism Versus Contextualism Conducted Via The West Key Number System, Joshua M. Silverstein
Faculty Scholarship
This Article sets forth an empirical study of a central issue in the judicial and academic debate over the optimal method of contract interpretation: Whether “textualism” or “contextualism” best minimizes contract enforcement costs. The study measured enforcement costs in twelve ways. Under each of those measures, there was no statistically significant difference in the level of interpretation litigation between textualist and contextualist regimes. Accordingly, the study finds no support for either the textualist hypothesis that contextualism has higher enforcement costs or the contextualist counter-hypothesis that textualism has higher enforcement costs.
The study herein was conducted via the West Key Number …
Using The West Key Number System As A Data Collection And Coding Device For Empirical Legal Scholarship: Demonstrating The Method Via A Study Of Contract Interpretation, Joshua M. Silverstein
Using The West Key Number System As A Data Collection And Coding Device For Empirical Legal Scholarship: Demonstrating The Method Via A Study Of Contract Interpretation, Joshua M. Silverstein
Faculty Scholarship
Empirical research is an increasingly important type of legal scholarship. Such research generally requires the collection and coding of large quantities of data. These tasks pose critical challenges for legal scholars. Most crucially, they are often resource-intensive. The primary purpose of this article is to explain how researchers can use the West Key Number System to dramatically streamline the process of data collection and coding. The article accomplishes this, in part, through a demonstration: it employs the Key Number System to conduct an empirical study of contract interpretation.
Contract interpretation is one of the most significant areas of commercial law. …