Contracts Commons^™

Employee Mobility And The Low Wage Worker: The Illegitimate Use Of Non-Compete Agreements, Jacqueline A. Carosa

The Docket

No abstract provided.

Technology, The Changing Nature Of Disputes, And The Future Of Equitable Principles In Canadian Contract Law, Conrad Flaczyk

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

There are a number of legitimate reasons to be excited about the application of new technologies to make contracting more efficient. Unfortunately, each of those reasons is associated with certain risks for both contractors and contractees. In this article, I argue that an ‘‘equitable” approach to modern contract law — understood by the likes of Larry DiMatteo and others ‘‘not merely as a system of rules, but of rules tempered by standards and principles” — is particularly well suited for counterbalancing some of the undesirable contractual risks introduced by new technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence, and smart contracts. A historical …

Transparency Of Insurance Contract Law In Singapore, Christopher C. H. Chen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

No abstract provided.

Learned Hand And The Objective Theory Of Contract Interpretation, Daniel P. O'Gorman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Contracts Formed By Software: When Things Go Wrong, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The use of software in contract formation is likely to become increasingly pervasive in light of the digital economy. Consequently, software can also be expected to exhibit greater autonomy and take on increasingly complex transactions and contract negotiations. It is important that a legally coherent, fair, certain and economically justified approach be taken to regulate such contracts.A ‘contracting problem’ arises when software is used to autonomously enter into contracts without human input. The formation of a valid contract requires, inter alia, an agreement between two or more parties, where each party exhibits an objective intention to be legally bound (the …

One-Legged Contracting, Ian Ayres, Gregory Klass

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This response to Robin Bradley Kar & Margaret Jane Radin, Pseudo-Contract and Shared Meaning Analysis, 132 Harv. L. Rev. 1135 (2019), makes three broad points. It criticizes as arbitrary and essentializing Kar and Radin’s insistence of shared meaning as the core of contracting. It argues that even if shared meaning were the sine qua non of contracting, their proposal fails to achieve it because it does not assure that the terms would be cooperatively communicated. And it argues that their proposed enforcement standard would in practice severely limit freedom of contract and likely reduce consumer welfare. There is a …

Contractual Communication, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this Response, I will investigate the foundations of both shared and unshared meaning in legal communication. Part I takes a step back from contractual communication and offers a preliminary sketch of a general model of legal communication; the sketch draws on speech act theory and the work of Paul Grice, extending and modifying many of the insights developed by Kar and Radin. Part II turns to contractual communication, differentiating distinct “situations of contractual communication” and interrogating Kar and Radin’s Shared Meaning Analysis. Part III interrogates Kar and Radin’s distinction between “contract” and “pseudo-contract.” The conclusion of the Response briefly …

Contracting For Fourth Amendment Privacy Online, Wayne A. Logan, Jake Linford

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Procreative Autonomy In Gestational Surrogacy Contracts, Vanessa Nahigian

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

With the growing practice of gestational surrogacy, many women bear children with whom they have no genetic relationship, allowing intended parents to have children of their own when they are otherwise unable to do so. This practice, however, creates a ripple in the abortion debate. This Note addresses procreative autonomy in the context of gestational surrogacy agreements, examines the underlying constitutional interests at stake for each party involved, and suggests a solution to fill California’s current statutory void.

Legal Frameworks & Foreign Investment: A Primer On Governments’ Obligations, Kaitlin Y. Cordes, Lise Johnson, Sam Szoke-Burke, Rumbidzaii Mawen

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Legal frameworks, and how they interact, are often invisible in the day to day. Yet they are powerful forces that influence government actions and that help to shape who benefits and who loses from foreign investment. Understanding these legal frameworks, and how they interact, is critical for anyone concerned with how foreign investment can be better harnessed to support, rather than weaken, sustainable development and human rights.

This primer provides a brief overview of host government obligations under international investment law, international human rights law, domestic law, and relevant investor-state contracts. It also highlights some of the ways in which …

Contractual Communication, Lawrence B. Solum

Faculty Scholarship

In Pseudo-Contract and Shared Meaning Analysis, Professors Robin Bradley Kar and Margaret Jane Radin develop an important theory of the nature of contract that draws on Paul Grice’s influential theory of meaning. That theory has significant implications for contract doctrine, in particular for questions about the enforceability of so-called “contracts of adhesion” in particular and for “boilerplate” in general. But at the most fundamental level, Kar and Radin’s work is about the nature of contractual communication. They answer the question, “How do contracts mean?,” by proposing a theoretical structure, which they name “Shared Meaning Analysis.” This Essay focuses on …

Cacs And Doorknobs, Anna Gelpern, Jeromin Zettelmeyer

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In response to debt crises, policy makers often feature Collective Action Clauses (CACs) in sovereign bonds among the pillars of international financial architecture. However, the content of official pronouncements about CACs suggests that CACs are more like doorknobs: a process tool with limited impact on the incidence or ultimate outcome of a debt restructuring. We ask whether CACs are welfare improving and, if so, whether they are pillars or doorknobs. The history of CACs in corporate debt suggests that CACs can be good, bad or unimportant depending on their vulnerability to abuse and the available alternatives, including bankruptcy and debt …

Getting What You Bargained For: Avoiding Legal Uncertainty In Survival Clauses For A Seller's Representations And Warranties In M&A Purchase Agreements, Will Pugh

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

This note will examine the variables that effect the way that courts may limit parties’ contractual freedom to shorten or lengthen statutes of limitation. It will describe the legal levers that determine the applicable survival period and suggest ways that parties can reduce legal uncertainty around the “basket” of provisions including reps, warranties, survival, and indemnification periods. One key detail examined by this note is “borrowing statutes ”that could operate to import another state’s controlling statute. Additionally, this note will discuss ways in which the contractual right to indemnification for breached reps and warranties is a substantive right that is …

The Fatal Leviathan: A Hayekian Perspective Of Lex Mercatoria In Civil Law Countries, Fabio Núñez Del Prado Ch.

Pace International Law Review

Who should create default commercial rules? Should they be created in a constructivist way or should they be created rather through a spontaneous order? Should Kelsen’s positivism prevail in commercial law? Drawing on diverse libertarian literature, I will argue that, since courts do not play a dominant role in civil law countries and, more importantly, do not set precedents, default commercial rules should not be created by the legislator, but through the Lex Mercatoria.

International Surrogacy Arrangements: A Human Rights Case, Marisa Araújo

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The scientific development in Artificial Reproductive Technology (ART), especially IFV solutions, are promoting the development of our reproductive options. Surrogacy is now one of these solutions and new ethical and legal problems arise.

Domestic Laws have the most different positions. If there are countries that admit surrogacy arrangements, even commercial ones like the Florida State in the USA (and the particular case of India); others criminalize these procedures and others, like the UK (and Portugal), have a middle term position.

Considering the frontier zone in which surrogacy takes its place, the debate is more exuberant since the concrete legal solution …

Contracts (Supplementary Cases): 2019-20, Robert E. Forbes

Osgoode Course Casebooks

Course code: 1010.4

Contracting (Incompletely) For Success: Designing Pay For Success Contracts For Social Impact Bonds (Sibs), Deborah Burand

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

More than two dozen social impact bonds have been launched in the United States since the first was contracted by New York City in 2012. Dozens more of these transactions are in progress across the United States, and more are likely to come prompted, at least in part, by the Social Impact Partnerships to Pay for Results Act (SIPPRA) of 2018.

As the number of social impact bonds has grown, the architecture of the pay for success contracts that undergird social impact bonds is starting to take recognizable form in the United States. What explains the design of these pay …

No Forum To Rule Them All: Comity And Conflict In Transnational Frand Disputes, Eli Greenbaum

Washington Law Review

Recent years have seen an explosion in FRAND litigation, in which parties commit to license intellectual property under “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory” (FRAND) terms, but they cannot agree on the meaning of that commitment. Much of this litigation is multinational and involves coordinating patent, antitrust, and contract claims across several jurisdictions. A number of courts and commentators have aimed to centralize and thereby streamline these disputes, whether by consolidating all litigation in one judicial forum or through the creation of a comprehensive arbitral process. This Article argues that such efforts are misguided—FRAND disputes are particularly unamenable to centralization, and the …

Contract Interpretation With Corpus Linguistics, Stephen C. Mouritsen

Washington Law Review

Courts and scholars disagree about the quantum of evidence that is necessary to determine the meaning of contractual provisions. Formalists favor excluding extrinsic evidence unless the contractual text is found to be ambiguous. Contextualists, by contrast, look to extrinsic evidence to support claims about contractual meaning even absent a finding of ambiguity. The formalist approach is faulted for failing to provide a meaningful account of the parties’ intentions and for placing heavy reliance upon the judge’s own linguistic intuitions and general-use English dictionaries—both problematic guides to plain meaning. At the same time, the contextualist approach may impose significant costs on …

Protecting Consumers As Sellers, Jim Hawkins

Indiana Law Journal

When the majority of modern contract and consumer protection laws were written in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, consumers almost always acted as buyers, and businesses almost always acted as sellers. As a result, these laws reflect a model of strong sellers and weak buyers. But paradigms are shifting. Advances in technology and constraints on consumers’ financial lives have pushed consumers into new roles. Consumers today often act as sellers—hawking gold to make ends meet, peddling durable goods on eBay, or offering services in the sharing economy to make a profit. Consumers and business models have changed, but the laws …