Contracts Commons^™

The Justice Of Private Law, Hanoch Dagan Dagan, Avihay Dorfman

Avihay Dorfman

Private law is traditionally conceptualized around a commitment to formal freedom and equality, whereas critics of the public/private distinction (including lawyer-economists) construe it as merely one form of regulation. We criticize the traditional position as conceptually misguided and normatively disappointing. But we also reject the conventional criticism, which confuses a justified rejection of private law libertarianism with a wholesale dismissal of the idea of a private law, thus threatening to deny private law’s inherent value. This Article seeks to break the impasse between these two positions by offering an innovative account of the justice that should, and to some extent …