Law Commons^™

The Uniform Commercial Code Survey: Introduction, Jennifer S. Martin, Colin P. Marks, Wayne Barnes

Faculty Scholarship

The survey that follows highlights the most important developments of 2020 dealing with domestic and international sales of goods, personal property leases, payments, letters of credit, documents of title. investment securities, and secured transactions.

Contract Schemas, Roseanna Sommers

Articles

This review draws on the notion of “contract schemas” to characterize what ordinary people think is happening when they enter into contractual arrangements. It proposes that contracts are schematically represented as written documents filled with impenetrable text containing hidden strings, which are routinely signed without comprehension. This cognitive template, activated whenever people encounter objects with these characteristic features, confers certain default assumptions, associations, and expectancies. A review of the literature suggests that contract schemas supply (a) the assumption that terms will be enforced as written, (b) the feeling that one is obligated to perform, and (c) the sense that one …

Debunking The Efficacy Of Standard Contract Boilerplate: Part Iii, David Spratt

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

There are several things wrong with this paragraph. First, the heading "Knowledge of Residence" is underinclusive, as the paragraph concerns more than where each party lives. A more inclusive and effective heading would be "Knowledge of Contact Information." Second, the introductory phrase is ambiguous, as one could read "for so long as the minor children are less than eighteen years of age" as requiring the parties to exchange information only until one of the parties' children turns 18. Moreover, "eighteen years of age" is archaic and clunky legalese. Keep it simple, solicitors: "eighteen" or "age eighteen" would suffice. Applying these …

Freedom From Things: A Defense Of The Disjunctive Obligation In Contract Law, Jennifer Nadler

Articles & Book Chapters

This article argues that the disjunctive obligation in contract law can be justified on moral grounds. It argues that from a perspective that regards human beings as free agents capable of choice and therefore independent of material objects, the contracting parties must be understood as agreeing to mutually guarantee one another's ownership of a certain value. This guarantee can be fulfilled either by handing over what was promised or by making up the difference between the market value and the contract value of what was promised. The plaintiff's contractual right is therefore a right that the defendant perform or pay. …

Choice Of Law For Formation Of Contracts: Solomon Lew V Kaikhushru Shiavax Nargolwala, Adeline Chong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

No abstract provided.

‘Choice Of Law For Formation Of Contracts: Solomon Lew V Kaikhushru Shiavax Nargolwala, Adeline Chong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The appropriate choice of law rule for the formation of a contract is an intractable question. Various solutions have been offered, with none enjoying universal approval. In Solomon Lew v Kaikhushru Shiavax Nargolwala, the Singapore Court of Appeal held in favour of the application of a nuanced version of the putative proper law of a contract. It further held that that there was no role for the lex fori in resolving this classic conflict of laws conundrum. While the SGCA emphasised that the reasonable expectations of the parties would be accommodated through its approach, this note argues that this would …

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.

Turning The Tables In Research And Development Licensing Contracts, Niyazi Taneri, Pascale Crama

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Research and development (R&D) collaborations between an innovator and her partner are often undertaken when neither party can bring the product to market individually, which precludes value creation without a joint effort. Yet, the uncertain nature of R&D complicates the monitoring of effort, and the resulting moral hazard reduces a collaboration’s value. Either party can avoid this outcome by acquiring the capability that is missing and then taking sole ownership of the project. That approach involves two types of risks: one related to whether the other party’s capability will be acquired and one related to how well it will be …

The Separation Of Voting And Control: The Role Of Contract In Corporate Governance, Gabriel V. Rauterberg

Articles

The default rules of corporate law make shareholders’ control rights a function of their voting power. Whether a director is elected or a merger is approved depends on how shareholders vote. Yet, in private corporations shareholders routinely alter their rights by contract. This phenomenon of shareholder agreements—contracts among the owners of a firm— has received far less attention than it deserves, mainly because detailed data about the actual contents of shareholder agreements has been lacking. Private companies disclose little, and shareholder agreements are thought to play a trivial or nonexistent role in public companies. I show that this is false—fifteen …

Deal Protection Devices, Albert H. Choi

Articles

In mergers and acquisitions transactions, a buyer and a seller will often agree to contractual mechanisms (deal protection devices) to deter third parties from jumping the deal and to compensate a disappointed buyer. With the help of auction theory, this Article analyzes various deal protection devices, while focusing on the two most commonly used mechanisms: match rights and target termination fees. A match right gives the buyer a right to “match” a third party’s offer so as to prevent the third party from snatching the target away, while a termination fee compensates the buyer when a third party acquires the …

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 …

The Curious Case Of Horseracing Data Caught In A Tangled Web Of Relationships – The Racing Partnership Ltd V. Sports Information Services Ltd [2020] Ewca Civ 1300, Cheng Lim Saw

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This paper comments on the recent split decision of the English Court of Appeal in The Racing Partnership Ltd v. Sports Information Services Ltd [2020] EWCA Civ 1300 concerning the common law action for misuse of confidential information. Although the majority overturned the decision of the trial judge and found in favour of the defendant, this author will explain why the conclusion reached by the dissenting judge is the more compelling.

Improve Recitals And Consideration Clauses With Plain Language, David Spratt

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

As used in a "WHEREAS" clause, the term "whereas" simply means "considering that" or "that being the case." There is no legal effect to the word "whereas." It, like many other words used in standard contract boilerplate, is left over from some long-forgotten era of legal writing when lawyers used big words and legalese to impress clients with their intelligence and to justify their bills. These times have (or at least should have) passed. Today, documents must be accessible to those who use them: in most cases the clients for whom such documents are drafted.

Understanding Post-Employment Obligations Of Confidence And Confidentiality In Compilations Of Data, Cheng Lim Saw, Zheng Wen Samuel Chan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article closely examinesn two specific areas in the law of confidence. The first concerns erstwhile employer-employee relationships and the various obligations of confidentiality that may bind an employee-including individuals who find themselves in positions analogous to employees-after the contract of employment has come to an end.

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.

Let's Get Serious - The Clear Case For Compensating The Student Athlete - By The Numbers - A University Of Michigan Athletic Program Case Study, Neal Newman

Faculty Scholarship

Should college athletes be compensated for their play and if so, how? The first question has been a debate for some time now. But the second question—the “how”—not so much. This writing addresses both questions in depth. With the Ed O’Bannon case that was decided back in August of 2014 and the palaver the Northwestern football team raised in their efforts to unionize, it is acknowledged that the discussions on this issue may have reached its crescendo years ago. That is until now. On September 27, 2019, Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, signed into law Senate Bill 206. Senate …

Getting Real About Procedure: Changing How We Think, Write And Teach About American Civil Procedure, Suzette M. Malveaux

Publications

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.

What Is The Meaning Of "Plain Meaning", Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

The American approach to construing texts (statutes, regulations, contracts and documents generally) stresses decision through determining the “plain meaning” of the document based on the court’s reading of the text. Where the court finds plain meaning on the face of text, it generally refuses to consider additional contextual information or extrinsic evidence of meaning.

Notwithstanding its status as the dominant approach to interpretation, the plain meaning concept has not been well defined or operationalized. Despite judicial confidence in the plain meaning approach, courts have wisely been willing to sidestep it and eschew the rather clear facial meaning of text when …

Rejecting Word Worship: An Integrative Approach To Judicial Construction Of Insurance Policies, Jeffrey W. Stempel, Erik S. Knutsen

Scholarly Works

Litigation over insurance coverage is really a quest for meaning: Does the insurance policy cover the loss at issue? Construing the insurance policy, courts are attempting to give legal effect to what the document purports to command. But what were the intentions and expectations of insurer and insured? Do those intentions even matter? Or is only the written text of the policy relevant to the coverage result? Courts approaching these questions typically frame the interpretative choice as one of strict textualism versus a more contextual, functionalist approach.

In many, perhaps even most situations, text and context align to create an …

A Paradigm Shift In Comparative Institutional Governance: The Role Of Contract In Business Relationships And Cost/Benefit Analysis, Juliet P. Kostritsky

Faculty Publications

Stewart Macaulay’s research on the ways that Wisconsin manufacturers transact debunked the centrality of contract law by revealing a disinclination to consult contract documents or invoke legal sanctions. This research revolutionized contracts scholarship, highlighting that a contract, instead of being viewed as an inevitable necessity of exchange, should be viewed as one of many institutions that might be available to parties as a solution to problems and a method for facilitating exchange. Macaulay’s research further revealed that the cost of legal sanctions, the importance of maintaining business relationships, and the desire for informal solutions actually push parties to conclude that …

Coming To Terms: Using Contract Theory To Understand The Detroit Water Shutoffs, Marissa Jackson Sow

Faculty Publications

After the City of Detroit underwent financial takeover and filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history in 2013, the city’s emergency manager encouraged mass water shutoffs as a way of making the city’s water utility a more attractive asset for sale— and for privatization—by ridding the water department of its association with bad debt. The sale never took place, but the water shutoff, too, became the largest ever in American history, with over 141,000 homes subjected to water disconnections over a period of over six years. The governor of the State of Michigan ordered that the shutoffs be temporarily …

The Vulnerable Sovereign, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

The connection between sovereignty and law is fundamental for both domestic (internal sovereignty) and the international (external sovereignty) purposes. As the dominant forms of government have evolved over time, so has the way in which we think about sovereignty. Consideration of the historical evolution of the concept of sovereignty offers insight into how we think of sovereignty today. A term that was born to represent the relationship between the governor and the governed has become a term that is used to represent the relationships between and among states in the global legal order. This article traces the history of the …

Uncertainty > Risk: Lessons For Legal Thought From The Insurance Runoff Market, Tom Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

Insurance ideas inform legal thought: from tort law, to health law and financial services regulation, to theories of distributive justice. Within that thought, insurance is conceived as an ideal type in which insurers distribute determinable risks through contracts that fix the parties’ obligations in advance. This ideal type has normative appeal, among other reasons because it explains how tort law might achieve in practice the objectives of tort theory. This ideal type also supports a restrictive vision of liability-based regulation that opposes expansions and supports cutbacks, on the grounds that uncertainty poses an existential threat to insurance markets.

Prior work …

The Social Cost Of Contract, David A. Hoffman, Cathy Hwang

All Faculty Scholarship

When private parties perform contracts, the public bears some of the costs. But what happens when society confronts unexpected contractual risks? During the COVID-19 pandemic, completing particular contracts—such as following through with weddings, conferences, and other large gatherings—will greatly increase the risk of rapidly spreading disease. A close reading of past cases illustrates that when social hazards sharply increase after formation, courts have sometimes rejected, reformed, and reinterpreted contracts so that parties who breach to reduce external harms are not left holding the bag.

This Essay builds on that observation in making two contributions. Theoretically, it characterizes contracts as bargains …

Did The America Invents Act Change University Technology Transfer?, Cynthia L. Dahl

All Faculty Scholarship

University technology transfer offices (TTOs) are the gatekeepers to groundbreaking innovations sparked in research laboratories around the U.S. With a business model reliant on patenting and licensing out for commercialization, TTOs were positioned for upheaval when the America Invents Act (AIA) transformed U.S. patent law in 2011. Now almost ten years later, this article examines the AIA’s actual effects on this patent-centric industry. It focuses on the five key areas of most interest to TTOs: i) first to file priority; ii) broadening of the universe of prior art; iii) carve-out to the prior commercial use defense; iv) micro-entity fees; and …

The Market As Negotiation, Rebecca E. Hollander-Blumoff, Matthew T. Bodie

All Faculty Scholarship

Our economic system counts on markets to allocate most of our societal resources. The law often treats markets as discrete entities, with a native intelligence and structure that provides clear answers to questions about prices and terms. In reality, of course, markets are much messier—they are agglomerations of negotiations by individual parties. Despite theoretical and empirical work on markets and on negotiation, legal scholars have largely overlooked the connection between the two areas in considering how markets are constructed and regulated.

This Article brings together scholarship in law, economics, sociology, and psychology to better understand the role that negotiation plays …

Contract's Influence On Feminism And Vice Versa, Martha M. Ertman

Faculty Scholarship

Feminist legal theory has both embraced and rejected contract. While contract-based conceptual and doctrinal tools have improved women’s economic and social status, feminists also critique contract-based reforms for colluding with hierarchies of gender, race and class. This chapter charts influential work on both sides of the contract debate and identifies a third approach that sees contract as a mechanism for law to move away from a hierarchal regime by stopping at a contractual way station en route to a more equal system of public ordering. It concludes by identifying ways that feminist legal theorists have injected feminist insights into traditional …

Contracts As Systems, Spencer Williams

Publications

A contract is much more complex than its individual terms would suggest. Yet contract scholars have traditionally taken a reductionist approach to the study of contracts. According to "contractual reductionism," a contract can be understood through each of its constituent terms. Recent scholarship, however, has begun to challenge contractual reductionism's term-by-term view of contracts. Building on this work, this Article provides the first application of complex systems theory to contracts, arguing that a contract is a complex system that is greater than the sum of its terms. A complex system is composed of many components that interact in a nontrivial …

A Theory Of Mistaken Assumptions In Contract Law, Jennifer Nadler

Articles & Book Chapters

In Great Peace Shipping v Tsavliris Salvage, the English Court of Appeal rejected the equitable doctrine of mistaken assumptions, arguing that the doctrine lacks a principled foundation. Defenders of the doctrine appear to agree that the doctrine lacks a coherent animating principle, but they think that its open-endedness is an argument in its favour. Against both the critics and the defenders, this article argues that the equitable doctrine of mistaken assumptions is a principled doctrine, one that protects individual self-determination by setting aside a contract that, due to a mistake about the quality of the thing contracted for, serves …