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Full-Text Articles in Law
Demystifying Implied Terms, Marcus Moore
Demystifying Implied Terms, Marcus Moore
All Faculty Publications
Recent years have witnessed significant interest in demystifying the implication of contract terms. Whilst the discussion thus far has elicited some answers, the subject remains notoriously ‘elusive'. This article advances discussion in the field. It argues that underlying recent debates are deeper issues that must be brought to the surface. These include theoretical incoherence regarding the nature/purpose of implication tracing back to The Moorcock (1889), and analytical indeterminacy in applying the established ‘tests' for implication, as courts vary between conflicting instrumental and non-instrumental approaches. Feeding both issues is inconsistent linguistic use of core terminology. This article helps demystify implication by …
Langdell And The Foundation Of Classical Contract Law, Daniel P. O'Gorman
Langdell And The Foundation Of Classical Contract Law, Daniel P. O'Gorman
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
A Comment On Colla And Gulati, Cheeky Contracting, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan
A Comment On Colla And Gulati, Cheeky Contracting, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan
All Faculty Scholarship
Colla and Gulati have identified a moment of disequilibrium in contract law and practice that tests the comfortable assumptions and taxonomies of contracts scholars. The dispute seems to pit the parties’ “real deal” against the paper deal, with attorneys for the creditors bewildered at Argentina’s novel and aggressive reading of its obligations. The focus of this commentary is, basically: How cheeky is cheeky?
Leases As Forms, David A. Hoffman, Anton Strezhnev
Leases As Forms, David A. Hoffman, Anton Strezhnev
All Faculty Scholarship
We offer the first large scale descriptive study of residential leases, based on a dataset of ~170,000 residential leases filed in support of over ~200,000 Philadelphia eviction proceedings from 2005 through 2019. These leases are highly likely to contain unenforceable terms, and their pro-landlord tilt has increased sharply over time. Matching leases with individual tenant characteristics, we show that unlawful terms are surprisingly likely to be associated with more expensive leaseholds in richer, whiter parts of the city. This result is linked to landlords' growing adoption of shared forms, originally created by non-profit landlord associations, and more recently available online …
New York's Requirements For Contractual Definiteness With Application To The Formation Of Investment Vehicles, Royce De R. Barondes
New York's Requirements For Contractual Definiteness With Application To The Formation Of Investment Vehicles, Royce De R. Barondes
Faculty Publications
A review of 82 modern New York cases reveals an unexpected frequency of authority requiring contractual definiteness as to what may reasonably appear to be minor terms.
Illustrative are cases holding inadequately definite ordinary ways preliminary agreements may express compensation on a percentage of net basis. Other unexpected authority (i) is less willing than expected to allow subsequent actions to provide sufficient definiteness to initially indefinite agreements and (ii) denies the enforceability of confidentiality provisions and a right of first refusal.
The survey includes some unexpected support for contracts specifying a plausibly material portion of the consideration with inadequate definiteness …
Lowering The Stakes Of The Employment Contract, Aditi Bagchi
Lowering The Stakes Of The Employment Contract, Aditi Bagchi
Faculty Scholarship
Every country has to make hard choices about the distribution of entitlements. But employers control the entitlements that individual Americans enjoy to a far greater extent than those in other rich democracies. In this Essay, I argue that, in the absence of the political consensus necessary to deliver state solutions to political questions, employers here are assigned an exaggerated role in employees’ lives. Government incentives for and directives to employers have become a strategy of political deflection. The effect has been to raise the stakes of employment well beyond the scope of those terms and conditions that relate to attracting …
The New Bailments, Danielle D'Onfro
The New Bailments, Danielle D'Onfro
Scholarship@WashULaw
The rise of cloud computing has dramatically changed how consumers and firms store their belongings. Property that owners once managed directly now exists primarily on infrastructure maintained by intermediaries. Consumers entrust their photos to Apple instead of scrapbooks; businesses put their documents on Amazon’s servers instead of in file cabinets; seemingly everything runs in the cloud. Were these belongings tangible, the relationship between owner and intermediary would be governed by the common-law doctrine of bailment. Bailments are mandatory relationships formed when one party entrusts their property to another. Within this relationship, the bailees owe the bailors a duty of care …
Contracts Without Courts Or Clans: How Business Networks Govern Exchange, Sadie Blanchard
Contracts Without Courts Or Clans: How Business Networks Govern Exchange, Sadie Blanchard
Journal Articles
Legal scholars have long recognized the close-knit community as an alternative institution for supporting trade when contract law and trusted courts are unavailable. But recent research suggests that another option may be available: heterogeneous business networks. What’s interesting is that these networks lack features traditionally seen as essential to community-supported trade. In particular, they lack preexisting noncommercial social ties that allow reliable and trusted information to spread at low cost, make exiting the network difficult, and enable coordinated sanctioning of cheaters. As a result, some leading scholars doubt that these networks are doing the work of sustaining cooperation. This Article …