Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Contract Law And The Liberalism Of Fear, Nathan B. Oman

Faculty Publications

Liberalism’s concern with human freedom seems related to contractual freedom and thus contract law. There are, however, many strands of liberal thought and which of them best justifies contract is a difficult question. In The Choice Theory of Contracts, Hanoch Dagan and Michael Heller offer a vision of contract based on autonomy. Drawing on the work of Joseph Raz, they argue that extending autonomy should be the law’s primary concern, which requires that we extend the range of contractual choices available. While there is much to admire in their work, I argue that autonomy as conceived by Dagan and Heller …