Contracts Commons^™

Gestation, Intent, And The Seed: Defining Motherhood In The Era Of Assisted Human Reproduction, Malina Coleman

Cardozo Law Review

This Article examines whether legal motherhood should be based on the preconception intentions of the two women who contribute a reproduction function, on genetic contribution, or on gestation. After assessing the costs and benefits that the various rules generate, the Article recommends that intent should be the determinative factor, but only if a system of rules is in place to protect against overreaching in surrogacy agreements. Otherwise, motherhood should be based on gestation alone.

International Contracts In European Courts: Jurisdiction Under Article 5(1) Of The Brussels Convention, Herbert Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Tort In A Contractual Matrix, John G. Fleming

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article addresses one aspect of the interface between tort and contract: the way tort law is affected, whether by extending or contracting its reach, by the parties coming together against a contractual structure. Two basic situations are considered. The first concerns the effect of a contractual limitation clause on the tort liability of, or to, a third party such as a subcontractor's to the building owner. The second considers what effect to attribute to a plaintiff's failure to protect himself or herself in advance by contracting against the risk

A New Use For An Old License: Who Owns The Right?, Barbara D. Griff

Cardozo Law Review

In order to establish this referential background, this Note begins in Part I with a look at historic new use cases focusing on whether a grant of dramatic rights included motion picture rights, whether a grant of silent motion picture rights included rights to talkies, and whether motion picture rights included television rights. Part I continues with a survey of the current landscape and provides an overview of cases involving a grant of motion picture or television rights seeking to include videocassette rights when the original contract was signed prior to the invention or popularization of the video cassette recorder …

Is The Pearson Airport Legislation Unconstitutional?: The Rule Of Law As A Limit On Contract Repudiation By Government, Patrick J. Monahan

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

It has long been assumed that Parliament has unlimited power to enact legislation cancelling valid contracts and denying compensation to any persons affected. This paper challenges that conventional wisdom. The author argues that the principle of the rule of law requires that governments be accountable in the ordinary courts for wrongful actions of government officials. This principle is undermined if government is absolved from any liability for breach of a fairly bargained and valid contract. Thus, legislation purporting to abrogate contracts and deny compensation is invalid, since it violates the implied limits on legislative authority associated with the rule of …

The Disclosure Obligations Of Partners Inter Se Under The Revised Uniform Partnership Act Of 1994: Is The Contractarian Revolution Failing?, Allan W. Vestal

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cardozo And Posner: A Study In Contracts, Lawrence A. Cunningham

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Remedies When Contracts Lack Consent: Autonomy And Institutional Competence, Richard Craswell

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Autonomy-based theories hold that enforceable contracts require the knowing and voluntary consent of the parties. In defining "knowing" and "voluntary," however, autonomy theorists have paid little attention to the remedy that will be granted if consent is round to be lacking, or to the question of what obligations (if any) will be enforced in place of the unconsented-to contract. In this paper, I expand on Michael Trebilcock's argument that considerations of institutional competence-specifically, the relative ability of courts and private actors to craft acceptable substitute obligations-should sometimes play a key role in defining what counts as "knowing" and "voluntary" consent.

The Idea Of A Public Basis Of Justification For Contract, Peter Benson

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

The essay has two main objects. The first is to take up and to develop certain of the difficulties that Professor Trebilcock finds with autonomy and welfare-based theories of contract law. The essay reaches the conclusion that efficiency, autonomy, and welfare approaches suffer from fundamental and yet qualitatively different kinds of defects. Moreover, in the course of its critical examination of these theories, the essay introduces and makes explicit an ideal of justification which The Limits of Freedom of Contract only implicitly assumes-an ideal of justification which the essay, following the recent work of Rawls, calls a "public basis of …

Hermeneutics And Contract Default Rules: An Essay On Lieber And Corbin, Lawrence A. Cunningham

Cardozo Law Review

The most provocative debate in contemporary contract law scholarship concerns default rule analysis. Dozens of law review articles have been devoted to this, puzzle regarding the manner in which courts do or should fill gaps in incomplete contracts. The timing and course of this debate might have been very different, however, except for an accident of intellectual history.

Institutions And Linguistic Conventions: The Pragmatism Of Lieber's Legal Hermeneutics, Guyora Binder

Cardozo Law Review

Like many other forms of social thought, legal theory has, over the last quarter century, taken an "interpretive" turn. Recent and contemporary writing on legal hermeneutics may be credited with two sensible but unsurprising claims about legal language.

The Scienter Requirement And Wash Trading In Commodity Futures: The Knowledge Lost In Knowing, Charles R.P. Pouncy

Cardozo Law Review

On September 1, 1990, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission ("CFTC" or "Commission") issued a complaint and notice of hearing in which it alleged, inter alia, that on over sixty occasions during the period of June 23, 1987 through September 17, 1987, brokers on New York City's Coffee, Sugar, and Cocoa Exchange had executed wash trades on behalf of a number of Japanese foreign brokers. Wash trading, which is prohibited by section 4c of the Commodity Exchange Act ("the Act"), consists of the simultaneous purchase and sale of the same number of futures contracts at the same or very similar …

The Robinson-Patman Act Sections 2(D) And 2(E): Promotional Allowances And The Per Se Rule Of Illegality, Julian Chung

Cardozo Law Review

The Robinson-Patman Act (the "Act"), as part of the antitrust laws, was designed to prevent direct and indirect price discrimination. Specifically, the Act prohibits price discrimination through the use of certain types of discounts granted by sellers to select customers. Sections 2(d) and 2(e) of the Act attempt to further this prohibition by expressly regulating promotional allowances and services. Although Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") enforcement of the sections has declined, private litigation under sections 2(d) and 2(e) of the Robinson-Patman Act has recently been revived. Three recent suits involving the compact disc ("CD") market exemplify this trend. Retailers of CDs …

They Came From "Beyond The Pale": Security Interests In Tort Claims, Harold R. Weinberg

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

"[B]eyond the pale" is how the drafters of Article Nine of the Uniform Commercial Code regarded tort claims. They considered tort claims to be noncommercial assets inappropriate for inclusion as collateral within the scope of a commercial financing statute. Tort claims may not be out-of-bounds much longer. The Article Nine Study Committee of the Permanent Editorial Board for the Uniform Commercial Code recommends expansion of the Article's scope to encompass security interests in claims arising out of tort. This recommendation is significant. Tort causes of action comprise an ever-expanding universe of civil wrongs for which courts afford redress. The owners …

Severability In Statutes And Contracts, Mark L. Movsesian

Faculty Publications

Established doctrine on the severability of unconstitutional statutory provisions has drawn criticism on almost every conceivable basis. Commentators have condemned severability doctrine as too malleable and as too rigid; as encouraging judicial overreaching and as encouraging judicial abdication. They have criticized the doctrine's reliance on legislative intent and its disregard of legislative intent; its excessive attention to political concerns and its inattention to political concerns; its lack of any coherent explanation.

The reasons for this lingering controversy are easy to discern. One is purely pragmatic. "We live in an age of statutes." Legislation provides our primary source of law in …

International Arbitration And Procedures To Enforce Awards In The Relationship Between The United States And Germany, Michael Kronenburg

LLM Theses and Essays

Arbitration has long been regarded as a process that combines finality of decision with speed, low expense, and flexibility in solving problems. For these reasons, arbitration is often favored over litigation for dispute resolution. Particularly in international cases, a businessman may avoid litigation in a foreign country for various reasons: he may be unfamiliar with the proceedings; he may be afraid to find a “forum hostile” because of the different legal and cultural background of the judges; and he may wish to avoid the uncertainty concerning the law arising from the contract. Arbitration proceedings have been held constitutional by the …

Job Security: Protecting At-Will Employees With Good Cause Legislation, Mayumi Yokoyama

LLM Theses and Essays

Recent decades have witnessed significant developments in employment termination law in the United States. In particular, the long-standing “at-will” doctrine, under which employers can fire employees for good, bad, or no reason at all, has experienced great erosion and wide variations in law from state to state. There has been a movement of statutory and common law restrictions limiting an employer’s freedom to terminate at will, which reflects the increasing consciousness of job security by society and workers. This paper analyzes the problem of job security by tracing the origin of the at-will doctrine to 19th century principles favoring economic …

The Internationalization Of Contractual Conflicts Law, Patrick J. Borchers

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Professor Borchers maintains that United States conflict of laws rules regarding contracts have long had an international character. This Article reviews the development of contractual conflicts law and examines how, through Joseph Story's treatises, the United States law in this area assumed an international perspective.

These international influences have played and will increasingly play an important role in the development of U.S. contractual conflicts rules. This influence can be seen in both choice-of-forum and choice-of-law agreements. Both have been upheld by U.S. courts initially in international cases, which presented starker contrasts in choice of law or choice of forum. Once …

Fiduciary Duties As Default Rules, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

This Article consists of four parts. Part I draws a profile of fiduciary relationships. It also explains the different responses of fiduciary and contract rules to the different problems that the relationships pose regarding: (1) the right of one party to rely on the other and the specific duties of loyalty and care, which mirror these rights; and (2) the events that trigger the application of fiduciary rules. Finally, it compares contract with fiduciary rules. The reasons for the existence of fiduciary rules suggest that, when in conflict, they trump the rules governing other parallel relationships, including contracts.

Part II …

Enforcing Coasian Bribes For Non-Price Benefits: A New Role For Restitution, Wendy J. Gordon, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

In Boomer v. Muir,¹ a subcontractor on a hydroelectric project continued to provide goods and services even though the value of the performance far exceeded the contract price. The general contractor, who was receiving these goods and services, breached the contract even though he was paying less than market price for them.²

In many states, a supplier in the subcontractor's position has among her options the choice of "rescission and restitution."³ That means the supplier may rescind the contract and seek, under the label of "restitution", payment set at market price (or at her cost)⁴ for …

Freedom Of Contract: The Trojan Horse Of Rule 10b-5, Margaret V. Sachs

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Contracts In Wonderland: A Fable Regarding The Administrative Adjudication Of Qualifying Facility Contracts In California, Arturo Gandara

San Diego Law Review

This Article is a call for reconsideration of the practice and judicial sanction of the administrative adjudication of contracts. It conducts a detailed examination of the adjudication of Qualifying Facility contracts by rate regulatory agencies. The broader case regarding the adjudication of contracts by administrative agencies is made to reveal the dimensions of matters of governance implicated by agency adjudication of contracts. The author concludes that regulatory bodies do not serve the best economic interests of society by adjudicating contract disputes.

Contract Formation And Modification Under Revised Article 2, Richard E. Speidel

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Intangibles Contracts: Thoughts Of Hubs, Spokes, And Reinvigorating Article 2, Raymond T. Nimmer

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reinventing The Wheel, Marion W. Benfield Jr., Peter A. Alces

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Revision Of Article 2: Romancing The Prism, John E. Murray Jr.

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Class, Personality, Contract, And Unconscionability, Jeffrey L. Harrison

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Wrong Side Of The Mountain: A Comment On Bad Faith's Unnatural History, Robert H. Jerry Ii

Faculty Publications

In this Comment, I will argue that courts have ignored bad faith's contractual heritage and have undervalued contract law's ability to respond to insurer misconduct. To draw upon Professor Powers's thoughtful analysis, I believe that courts invoked the tort paradigm before it was clear that the contract paradigm was inadequate. For lack of data, I will stop short of recommending where we should go from here, but I will suggest that our behavior in the face of bad faith liability in tort may have changed no less than the environment and that the perceived relative calm in the tort's current …

Forum Selection Clauses In Florida, Brian Mattis

St. Thomas Law Review

This Article briefly summarizes the evolution of forum selection clauses in the United States in general, and in Florida in particular. The writer contends that McRae was incorrectly decided on constitutional and statutory grounds, and proposes steps which may be taken to overrule the McRae decision. Lastly, the Article addresses some forum selection problems raised by the United States Supreme Court's recent decision in Carnival Cruise.

A Pragmatic Strategy For The Scope Of Sales Law, The Statute Of Frauds, And The Global Currency Bazaar, Raj Bhala

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.