Contracts Commons^™

Expectation Damages, The Objective Theory Of Contracts, And The "Hairy Hand" Case: A Proposed Modification To The Effect Of Two Classical Contract Law Axioms In Cases Involving Contractual Misunderstandings, Daniel P. O'Gorman

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Grapes Of Wrathful Heirs: Terminations Of Transfers Of Copyright And "Agreements To The Contrary", Michael J. Bales

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Right Of Publicity Licensing In A New Age: No Doubt V. Activision Publishing, Inc., Marta Baffy

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Informed Choices And Uniform Decisions: Adopting The Aba's Self-Enforcing Administrative Model To Ensure Successful Surrogacy Arrangements, Christine Metteer Lorillard

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

Non-traditional families are on the rise in America today, with more and more same-sex couples raising families together. Yet, all same-sex partners seeking to become parents must make use of some assisted reproductive technique ("ART'), as must some heterosexual married couples. Despite the growing number of people who want to create families, including those that resort to ARTs to have genetically-related children, there are significant moral, economic, and legal obstacles in their way. What has long been needed is a codified roadmap for a successful surrogacy agreement that delineates the rights and obligations of the parties involved, as well as …

Coping With Uncertainty: The Role Of Contracts In Russian Industry During The Transition To The Market, Kathryn Hendley

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

In the decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia earned a reputation for being a chaotic environment for business. Some commentators went so far as to label it as the "Wild East," a scary place where law was largely irrelevant and criminal gangs held sway. In a series of articles, I have begun to fill this gap in the literature by exploring the day-to-day reality of life for industrial enterprises in Yeltsin's Russia. The picture that emerges is more nuanced than the stereotype of industry beholden to the mafia that the popular media has perpetuated. In this article, …

Rethinking Environmental Contracting, Natasha Affolder

All Faculty Publications

Environmental contracts occupy an ill-defined middle ground between command and control regulation and voluntary initiatives. These agreements have captured the imagination of policymakers and scholars in the U.S. and Europe in particular. They are heralded as promising examples of “new governance.” This Article explores a little known example of environmental contracting which emerged in the context of a Canadian diamond mine — the Ekati Environmental Agreement. Through a fine-grained case study of the Ekati Agreement, this article challenges some of the assumptions that shape the “environmental contracting literature as well as the wider literature on “new governance.” By debunking the …

Braiding: The Interaction Of Formal And Informal Contracting In Theory, Practice, And Doctrine, Ronald J. Gilson, Charles F. Sabel, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

This Article studies the relationship between formal and informal contract enforcement. The theoretical literature treats the two strategies as separate phenomena. By contrast, a rich experimental literature considers whether the introduction of formal contracting and state enforcement "crowds out" the operation of informal contracting. Both literatures focus too narrowly on how formal contracts create incentives for parties to perfom substantive actions, while assuming that informal enforcement depends on preexisting levels of trust. As a result, current scholarship misses the relationship between formal and informal contract mechanisms that characterizes contemporary contracting in practice. Parties respond to rising uncertainty by writing contracts …

Disintegrating Customary International Law: Reactions To Withdrawing From International Custom, Christiana Ochoa

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Withdrawing from International Custom, a recent article by Curtis Bradley and Mitu Gulati, has sparked interest and debate. Bradley and Gulati’s article, develops with significant nuance and detail that, naturally, can be best understood by a careful reading of their work. In essence, it proposes a modification in customary international law (CIL) doctrine – a change that would permit states to unilaterally exit from existing customary international law. This Essay will act as a brief reflection on that article. In Part I, it will explore the analogies Withdrawing makes between CIL and contract and will argue, first that CIL and …

Updating The Electronic Transactions Act? Australia's Accession To The Un Convention On The Use Of Electronic Communications In International Contracts 2005, Eliza Karolina Mik

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article discusses the Australian Government’s proposal to accede to the United Nations Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts as well as certain amendments to existing Australian electronic transactions legislation, i.e. the Electronic Transactions Act (Commonwealth) 1999 (”ETA”) and its state equivalents. Without going into a detailed discussion of all suggested amendments, this article focuses on those recommendations, which affect the area of contract formation, in particular: the use of automated systems in on-line transactions and the determination of the time the contract comes into existence. A critical review of the proposed changes reveals that their …

Evaluating The Impact Of The Un Convention On The Use Of Electronic Communications In International Contracts On Domestic Contract Law: The Singapore Example, Eliza Mik

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts (CUECIC or Convention) was adopted on 23 November 2005. Its essential objective is to establish uniform rules intended to “remove obstacles to the use of electronic communications in international contracts, including obstacles that might result from the operation of existing international trade law instruments, with a view to enhancing legal certainty and commercial predictability.” The Convention relies on the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Commerce (MLEC), which constitutes an e-commerce flagship project dating back to 1995. It also resembles UNCITRAL’s Convention …

Organizations Matter: They Are Institutions, After All, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

Judge Posner (2010) offers a substantial agenda for organization economics. He advises us on how organization economics can shed substantial light on some of the most pressing social problems of the day. I comment on two of the areas he selects for discussion and offer some comments on the relationship of organization economics to new institutional economics. Judge Posner surely is right to argue that organization economics can help us understand the failures of corporate governance in regulating executive pay. Moreover, with additional and more institutionally nuanced theorizing, organizational economics should further our understanding of the work of judiciaries in …

Contract Law, Party Sophistication And The New Formalism, Meredith R. Miller

Scholarly Works

With increasing frequency, courts are mentioning party sophistication as relevant to whether a contract has been formed, whether a contract is enforceable, how the contract should be interpreted, and even, in some instances, the determination of an appropriate remedy. Sophisticated parties are held to a different set of rules, grounded in freedom of contract. It is presumed that a sophisticated party was aware of what to bargain for and read (or should have read) and understood (or should have understood) the terms of a written agreement.

But, just what do courts mean when they call a contracting party “sophisticated”?

“Sophistication” …

Giving Unconscionability More Muscle: Attorney's Fees As A Remedy For Contractual Overreaching, Stephen E. Friedman

Georgia Law Review

This Article seeks to broaden the conversation about unconscionability. While most of the discussion has focused on the appropriate standard for determining unconscionability, this Article focuses on the appropriate remedy to be imposed when unconscionability is found. The current remedy for unconscionability is nonenforcement or limited enforcement of unconscionable contracts or contract terms. This remedy is inadequate and seriously undermines unconscionability's effectiveness as a tool for policing against contractual overreaching. The Article proposes that courts be given discretion to award attorney's fees to consumers who successfully establish the unconscionability of a standard form contract. Such a remedy would enable unconscionability …

Standardization Of Standard-Form Contracts: Competition And Contract Implications, Mark R. Patterson

Faculty Scholarship

Standard-form contracts are a common feature of commercial relationships because they offer the advantage of lower transaction costs. This advantage of standard contracts is increased when there is a second layer of standardization under which multiple firms agree on a standard contract. Trade associations and similar entities often effect standardization of this kind through collective agreement on a standard contract, sometimes under the aegis of state actors. Multifirm contract standardization can provide not only the usual transaction-cost advantages of standard-form contracts, but also increased competition among firms, because a standard contract makes comparison among firms’ offerings easier. But standardization among …

You Do Have To Keep Your Promises: A Disgorgement Theory Of Contract Remedies, Steve Thel, Peter Siegelman

Faculty Scholarship

Contract law is generally understood to require no more of a person who breaches a contract than to give the injured promisee the "benefit of the bargain." The law is thus assumed to permit a promise-breaker to keep any profit remaining from breach, after putting the victim in the position he would have been in had the promise been performed. This conventional description is radically wrong: across a wide range of circumstances, standard contract doctrines actually do require people to keep their promises, or to disgorge their entire profit from breach if they do not. Rather than protecting the expectation …

Rewarding Trespass & Other Enigmas: The Strange World Of Self-Exclusion & Casino Liability, Emir Aly Crowne-Mohammed, Meredith A. Harper

UNLV Gaming Law Journal

In this paper, the authors address many of the tortious and contractual issues associated with the liability of casinos to problem gamblers. The issues in tort are analyzed through the traditional elements of the action – duty of care, standard of care, proximity, and recognizable loss. Under contract law, the authors examine the problems associated with consideration and mental capacity when problem gamblers sign a contractual undertaking to be excluded from casinos and other gaming venues.

Many of the references cited in this work relate to the Province of Ontario because an earlier article (and report) on the issue of …

Contract Is Context, Peter A. Alces

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Reliance On Oral Promises: Statute Of Frauds And Promissory Estoppel, David G. Epstein

Law Faculty Publications

Reliance on oral promises is the basis not only for law school hypotheticals but also for real world litigation. Consider the following hypothetical based on the 1970 Supreme Court of Hawaii decision in Mcintosh v. Murphy: Tex moved from Lubbock, Texas to Oklahoma to work for Murphy Motors Chevrolet-Oldsmobile, an Okmulgee car dealership. Tex signed a lease for an apartment in Okmulgee. After two months as assistant sales manager, Murphy Motors fired Tex. Tex sued Murphy Motors alleging breach of an alleged oral agreement that she would be employed for two years. It is understandable that a jury might not …

A Standard Clause Analysis Of The Frustration Doctrine And The Material Adverse Change Clause, Andrew A. Schwartz

Publications

In the darkest depths of a corporate merger agreement lies the MAC clause, a term that permits the acquirer to walk away from a transaction if, between signing and closing, the target company experiences a "Material Adverse Change." Multibillion-dollar deals rise or fall based on the anticipated interpretation of a MAC clause, and invocation of the clause in a sensitive transaction could trigger the collapse of the global financial system. In short, the MAC clause is the most important contract term of our time. And yet--due to an almost total lack of case law--no one knows what it means.

In …

At The Brink Of Free Agency: Creating The Foundation For The Messersmith-Mcnally Decision - 1968-1975, Edmund P. Edmonds

Journal Articles

"One of the most dramatic periods in baseball’s long history of labor relations occurred from 1968 through 1975. The Major League Baseball Players Association negotiated baseball’s first Basic Agreement in 1968 without the benefit of any leverage that could alter most of Organized Baseball’s long practices that controlled the players’ mobility and wages. In 1975, however, the union won an arbitration panel hearing that determined that pitchers Dave McNally and Andy Messersmith were free agents after playing one full season under the renewed option year of their contracts and filing a grievance under the newly adopted arbitration process. This stunning …