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Legal Determinacy And Moral Justification, Jody S. Kraus

Faculty Scholarship

Since this is a conference on law and morality, and the topic of this panel is theories of contract law, I thought it particularly appropriate to ask how a theory of contract law can provide a moral justification for contract law. That question can be answered only by providing a more general account of how a legal theory can provide a moral justification for any area of the private law. In this preliminary Essay, I argue that in order morally to justify the private law, a theory of the private law must derive reasons from a normative political theory that …