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Full-Text Articles in Law and Economics
The Law Of Duress And The Economics Of Credible Threats, Oren Bar-Gill, Omri Ben-Shahar
The Law Of Duress And The Economics Of Credible Threats, Oren Bar-Gill, Omri Ben-Shahar
Articles
This paper argues that enforcement of an agreement, reached under a threat to refrain from dealing, should be conditioned solely on the threat's credibility. When a credible threat exists, enforcement promotes social welfare and the threatened party's interests. If agreements backed by credible threats were not enforceable, the threatening party would not extort them and would instead refrain from deaing-to the threatened party's detriment. The doctrine of duress, which invalidates such agreements, hurts the coerced party. By denying enforcement when a credible threat exists, the duress doctrine precludes the threatened party from making the commitment necessary to reach agreement. Paradoxically, …
The Tentative Case Against Flexibility In Commercial Law, Omri Ben-Shahar
The Tentative Case Against Flexibility In Commercial Law, Omri Ben-Shahar
Articles
Well-rooted in modern commercial law is the idea that the law and the obligations that it enforces should reflect the empirical reality of the relationship between the contracting parties. The Uniform Commercial Code ("Code") champions this tradition by viewing the performance practices formed among the parties throughout their interaction as a primary source for interpreting and supplementing their explicit contracts. The generous recognition of waiver and modifications, as well as the binding force the Code accords to course of performance, course of dealings, and customary trade usages, effectively permits unwritten commercial practices to vary and to erode explicit contractual provisions.