Includes bibliographical references. Offprint: Connecticut law review. Volume 56, number 3 (March 2024)
Summary:
"Many contract theorists argue that contracts are promises. Such a view is appealing because it can justify the institution of contract law; contract law allows parties to vindicate their promissory rights. In this article I argue that the contract-as-promise crowd has seriously misunderstood how promises work. They assume a cartoon version of promises, one that is overly abstract, individualistic, and is singularly fixated on the obligation to do what one promised. Such theorists have failed to adequately attend to other important dimensions of promises: How stringent is the promise? Under what conditions is a person obligated to perform? How is an agent entitled to respond to a breach? How should a promisee respond to a request for release? When should a promisee agree to renegotiate? Through a series of examples, I show how these features of promissory morality vary radically across different kinds of human relationships--e.g., marriage, friendship, employment, parenting, and commercial bargains. This is an important result for contract theory. Courts routinely invoke the idea of a general, uniform set of contract principles applicable to all contracts. But if promissory morality doesn't justify applying uniform contract principles across different contracting relationships, likely nothing does. We should thus liberate ourselves from the idea of general contract principles and embrace a kind of contractual pluralism."
OCLC:
(OCoLC)1446217596
Locations:
OVUX522 -- University of Iowa Libraries (Iowa City)
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.