ABSTRACT
Despite their ever-increasing place in modern contract law, the rules for third-party beneficiaries receive relatively little academic and theoretical attention. They are rarely taught in law schools, receive only scant discussion – if any – in broad theoretical accounts of contract law, and are often regarded as mere peculiarities. Yet it can hardly be said that the topic is not philosophically rich. This Chapter aims to lay out the theoretical puzzles presented by third-party beneficiaries as an invitation for more attention by contract and private law scholars. It offers a basic primer on third-party rules, describes the distinctive challenge that third-party beneficiary rules pose for rights-based theories of contract law, explores the theoretical responses available to solve that problem, and connects these theoretical questions with a classificatory problem that presently bedevils courts.
Cornell, Nicolas, Third Parties, in Research Handbook on the Philosophy of Contract Law, Chen-Wishart and Saprai (eds) (2023) (Forthcoming).
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