Law Commons^™

Would Reasonable People Endorse A ‘Content-Neutral’ Law Of Contract?, Aditi Bagchi

Faculty Scholarship

This essay raises two challenges to Peter Benson’s compelling new account of contract law. First, I argue that Benson’s use of the concept of reasonableness goes beyond the Rawlsian account to require that we impute to others a capacity to transcend their contingent circumstances in the context of contractual choice. In fact, our choices in contract are driven by external contingencies and it is only reasonable to take those constrains on other people’s choices into account. Second, I contest Benson’s related claim that contract law should be, and largely is, content-neutral. I argue to the contrary that the justice of …

More Contract Lore, Robert A. Hillman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Contract lore consists of “traditional beliefs” about contract law that judges, lawyers, and scholars applying and writing about contract law, employ so routinely and confidently that the principles demonstrate how we perceive contract law today. Previously, I presented three illustrations of contract lore: First, expectancy damages put the injured party in as good a position as if there were no breach. Second, the reasons for a breach, “whether willful, negligent, or unavoidable, are irrelevant to the rules of performance and remedies.” Third, contract formation and interpretation focus on the parties’ intentions.

None of these principles are factually or historically even …

Contract Consideration And Behavior, David A. Hoffman, Zev. J. Eigen

All Faculty Scholarship

Contract recitals are ubiquitous. Yet, we have a thin understanding of how individuals behave with respect to these doctrinally important relics. Most jurists follow Lon Fuller in concluding that when read, contract recitals accomplish their purpose: to caution against inconsiderate contractual obligation. Notwithstanding the foundational role that this assumption has played in doctrinal and theoretical debates, it has not been tested. This Article offers what we believe to be the first experimental evidence of the effects of formal recitals of contract obligation — and, importantly too, disclaimers of contractual obligation — on individual behavior. In a series of online experiments, …

A Renewed Consideration Of Consideration: Mwb Business Exchange Centres Ltd V Rock Advertising Ltd [2016] Ewca Civ 553, Kenny Chng, Yihan Goh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This note argues thatthe English Court of Appeal decision of MWBBusiness Exchange Centres Ltd v Rock Advertising Ltd is a significantmodification of the present understanding of consideration with respect toagreements to accept part-payments of a debt and to perform pre-existing duties,and that the preferred way forward for the development of the law should be judicialintervention by the Supreme Court to reconcile the logical inconsistenciesbetween Foakes v Beer and Williams v Roffey Bros & Nicholls(Contractors) Ltd.

Viken Securities Limited, Order Granting Defendants' Motion For Summary Judgment And Denying Plaintiffs' Motion For Partial Summary Judgement As To Counts I & Ii, Melvin K. Westmoreland

Georgia Business Court Opinions

No abstract provided.

Cross-Cultural Readings Of Intent: Form, Fiction, And Reasonable Expectations, Deborah Waire Post

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Correspondence Of Contract And Promise, Jody S. Kraus

Faculty Scholarship

Correspondence accounts of the relationship between contract and promise hold either that contract law is justified to the extent it enforces a corresponding moral responsibility for a promise or unjustified to the extent it undermines promissory morality by refusing to enforce a corresponding moral responsibility for a promise. In this Article, I claim that contract scholars have mistakenly presumed that they can assess the correspondence between contract and promise without first providing a theory of self-imposed moral responsibility that explains and justifies the promise principle. I argue that any plausible theory of self-imposed moral responsibility is inconsistent with a strong …

When Are Agreements Enforceable? Giving Consideration To Professor Barnett's Consent Theory Of Contract, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

This address considers five points: (1) the place of theory in American contract law; (2) the basic elements of Professor Barnett's theory are; (3) how these elements are similar to Continental law; (4) what it says about the American legal world that Barnett's theory has been discussed without reference to Continental systems; and, finally, (5) why I believe the American model is not a good one for a future European Civil Code but also hope that such a Code will become law.

Commodification And Contract Formation: Placing The Consideration Doctrine On Stronger Foundations, David Gamage, Allon Kedem

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Under the traditional consideration doctrine, a promise is only legally enforceable if it is made in exchange for something of value. This doctrine lies at the heart of contract law, yet it lacks a sound theoretical justification a fact that has confounded generations of scholars and created a mess of case law.

This article argues that the failure of traditional justifications for the doctrine comes from two mistaken assumptions. First, previous scholars have assumed that anyone can back a promise with nominal consideration if they wish to do so. We show how social norms against commodification limit the availability of …

You Asked For It, You Got It … Toy Yoda: Practical Jokes, Prizes, And Contract Law, Keith A. Rowley

Scholarly Works

For what seemed to be a simple contract dispute, Berry v. Gulf Coast Wings Inc. garnered an unusual amount of attention in both the legal and popular press. Former Hooters waitress Jodee Berry sued her ex-employer for breaching its promise to award a new Toyota to the winner of an April 2001 sales contest. Berry alleged that her manager, Jared Blair, told the waitresses at the Hooters where she worked at the time that whoever sold the most beer at each participating location during April 2001 would be entered in a drawing, the winner of which would receive a new …

Freedom From Reliance: A Contract Approach To Express Warranty, Sidney Kwestel

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Article Two Warranties In Commercial Transactions: An Update, Kathryn L. Moore, Debra L. Goetz, Douglas E. Perry, David S. Rabb

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In 1978 the Cornell Law Review published a Special Project devoted to Article Two commercial warranties. Nine years have since elapsed, and we have decided to update and reassess this important area of the law. We have discovered that although judicial treatment of many aspects of Article Two warranty law has remained stable, in some instances the courts' treatment has progressed and in other instances it has become unclear. This Special Project is our attempt to assemble these changes, interpret the progress, and suggest new lines of analysis to clarify areas of conflict.

The Seller's Action For The Price, John B. Waite

Articles

WHEN a contract of sale has been broken by the buyer, before title has passed according to the usual rules of presumption, there arises the very practical question whether the seller can sue him for the purchase price, as such, or is limited to a suit for damages only. In the latter case his damage may happen to equal the purchase price, but it is usually considerably less than that amount. If the seller can recover the purchase price, as such, it must be because that price is legally due him as a consequence of the contract. The ultimate inquiry …

Performance Of An Existing Obligation As Consideration For A Promise, John B. Waite

Articles

The dictum that if there be nothing in a rule flatly contradictory to reason the law will presume it to be well founded, and that the office of the judge is "jus dicere and not jus dare", is responsible for much agony of construction and tortious logic on the part of courts torn by desire to evade it in the interest of modern ideas of right. There is a trilogy of accepted legal principles which it has been particularly difficult for the courts to adhere to in spirit or to repudiate in letter. They are the propositions, that for a …

Performance Of Legal Obligation As A Consideration For A Promise, John B. Waite

Articles

At a time when the true reasonableness of the common law and its responsiveness to the actualities of life are under criticism, it is interesting to find several cases, within the past year, affirming the old rule that performance of a legal duty is not consideration for a promise. In Vance v. Ellison, (V. Va.) 85 S. E. 776, suit was brought to enjoin the enforcement of a deed of trust executed by plaintiff to defendant, to secure payment of $1000 promised for legal services. It was admitted that when the deed was executed the defendant was already bound by …

A Definition Of Consideration, John B. Waite

Articles

COMPOSING general statements of law is at best a didactic pursuit rather than a practically useful one, however agreeable an occupation it may be. The particulars of the past are not evaded by statement of their essence, and courts tend to guide their rulings by analogy to specific precedents in preference to rules educed therefrom by however studious laymen. And, on the other hand, the general expressions and definitions, so called, formulated by courts themselves, often hastily and hap-hazardly, which have been followed by other courts, do more to confuse the law, and confute its real precision of statement, than …

The Public Policy Of Contracts To Will Future Acquired Property, Joseph H. Drake

Articles

The general subject of wills upon consideration seems to have given courts and jurists a good deal of trouble, not only in England and America, but also in the continental countries. The Code Napoleon appears in terms actually to prohibit the making of reciprocal or mutual wills in the same instrument.

Subscriptions, Henry W. Rogers

Articles

One cannot expect, within the limits of a single article, to exhaust the law relating to Subscriptions. But within the limits assigned, I propose to consider some portions of the law relating to this subject, which seem to me to be of sufficient interest and importance to merit attention in these pages. The subject of Subscriptions is seemingly a narrow one, and yet it has given rise to very considerable litigation, and out of it have come many interesting questions, upon the determination of which large pecuniary interests have often-times depended, especially in the case of Stock Subscriptions.