“The legal shift from status to contract has been recognized for a very long time. New work in private law theory has begun to reassess these concepts and how they relate to each other. Here are two recent instances. First, there is an important new paper by Hanoch Dagan and Elizabeth Scott, ‘Reinterpreting the Status-Contract Divide’, forthcoming in Contract, Status, and Fiduciary Law (Miller and Gold, eds) (Oxford, 2016). Dagan and Scott contend that a common focus on either status or contract overlooks intermediate categories. In their view, two key categories are offices (which on their account implicate personal identity, and largely involve non-negotiable terms), and contract types (which are largely made up of default terms, and are shaped by a particular animating principle). If they are right that status and contract exist along a spectrum, then some very interesting questions are raised. How should we determine where a given legal relation fits along this spectrum? And perhaps more importantly, where would it be best for a given legal relation to fit? …” (more)
[Andrew Gold, New Private Law, 8 March]
First posted 2016-03-09 07:21:25
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