Category Archives: Contract
Evan Piermont, ‘Vague Preferences and Contracts’
ABSTRACT In this paper, I examine decision making in an environment where payoff relevant contingencies are vague, that is neither absolutely true nor absolutely false. In this model, an agent values acts that are predicated on linguistic statements, rather than an exogenous state-space. I axiomatize a class of preferences under which agent’s beliefs about the […]
Travis Gilly, ‘Phantom Consent: Formation Failure, Inaccessible Interfaces, and the Collapse of the Clickwrap Shield’
ABSTRACT Every consumer platform on the internet sits behind the same front door: a wall of terms presented through an interface engineered to be clicked rather than read, followed by an Accept button. Courts enforce what happens at that door under an objective theory of assent that asks whether a reasonably prudent offeree would have […]
Bruce Wardhaugh, ‘Ticket touting, moral outrage and political opportunism: how not to protect consumers’
ABSTRACT On 31 August 2024, tickets for the Oasis reunion tour went on sale. The outcome was predictable. Prospective purchasers waited online for hours to buy tickets, many were disappointed. Tickets soon appeared on secondary sites at prices which greatly exceeded originally advertised prices. The resulting outcries fed into the new Government’s manifesto promise to […]
Chen Lin and others, ‘Investor Protection in Venture Capital: How Do Legal Systems Shape Contracting?’
ABSTRACT This paper examines how legal systems shape contractual investor protection by using a distinctive feature of China’s venture capital (VC) market, where investments are structured either through offshore entities governed by common law or through onshore entities subject to domestic civil law. This institutional duality generates substantial within-market variation in legal origin under a […]
Sam Wise, ‘Analyzing the Legal Enforceability of BDSM Contracts between Sex Workers and Clients’
ABSTRACT Contracts are the common legal solution provided to those entering into agreements who wish to decrease their liability. However, there is a limit to which communities can take advantage of these legal protections. As previously taboo sexual practices like BDSM become more popular, those seeking to engage in the practices may think it reasonable […]
Schwartz and Sepe, ‘Freedom of Contract at Common Law’
ABSTRACT We defend the common law conception of freedom of contract against criticisms that unregulated contractual freedom permits strong parties to impose unjust terms on weak parties. Common law courts enforce contracts when the parties are informed, competent and free from coercion, and performance of such a contract would not impose costs on nonparties. These […]
‘Collaboration and Cooperation Under Contract Law’
Sarah Dadush, ‘Shared Responsibility in American Contract Law’, Tennessee Law Review (forthcoming), available at SSRN (1 March 2026); Emily J Stolzenberg, ‘Toward a Private Law of Intimates’ Obligations’, 111 Iowa Law Review (forthcoming), available at SSRN (2 February 2026). Under most descriptions, contract law perceives parties as dealing with each other at arm’s length. It […]
Anthony Sangiuliano, ‘Justice Brown’s Private Law Egalitarianism’
ABSTRACT This article contributes to a counter-narrative about the jurisprudence of Supreme Court of Canada Justice Russell Brown by examining how some of his private law judgments advance egalitarian values and social justice. While Justice Brown’s constitutional equality decisions have attracted sustained criticism for allegedly undermining substantive equality under section 15 of the Canadian Charter […]
Daniel Paisant Jr, ‘The Applicability of Comparative Fault in Contract-Based Actions: A Louisiana Circuit Split’
INTRODUCTION The law in Louisiana is based upon a strong civil law tradition, which is a deeply rooted, historical viewpoint about the law, the law’s interaction with society, and the proper organization and operation of a system of law. A supreme value in Louisiana’s civil law system is certainty. Certainty and constancy of the law […]
Alain Levasseur, ‘Consideration, Detrimental Reliance, Promissory Estoppel – or the 1984 Common Law Rodents in the Louisiana Civil Code of 1825’
INTRODUCTION The dates of March 1825 to March 2025 marked 200 years in the existence of the Louisiana Civil Code and its implementation in Louisiana, the only mixed jurisdiction in a nation otherwise under the control of the common law tradition. The celebration of the Bicentennial Anniversary of the Civil Code of 1825 took place […]