This book reviews and critiques some of the major theories of contract law. The theories of contract law selected for coverage include law and economics, behavioral decision theory, inequality of bargaining power, law as interpretation (idealism), and critical legal theory. Chapters 2 through 4 examine the use of the themes of rationality and efficiency to rationalize contract law. Chapters 5 and 6 analyze the role of bargaining power in contract law. Chapters 7 and 8 analyze the idealism of Karl N. Llewellyn and Ronald Dworkin that advances the proposition that law is able to obtain internal integrity through a process of theory building. Chapter 9 explores the major tenets of Critical Legal Studies, Critical Race Theory, and Feminist Legal Theory. Chapter 9 also acts as a capstone chapter in that it incorporates much of the analysis provided in the earlier chapters. New theoretical insights into more specific areas of interest are provided, such as the problems of rational choice theory, bargaining power, theory of interpretation, and the use of contextualism as a positive methodology of critical legal theory. In the end, the book should be viewed as a series of independent essays under the very broad umbrella of contract theory.
The law of contract is ripe for feminist analysis. Despite increasing calls for the re-conceptualisation of neo-classical ways of thinking, feminist perspectives on contract tend to be marginalised in mainstream textbooks. This edited collection questions the assumptions made in such works and the ideologies that underpin them, drawing attention to the ways in which the law of contract has facilitated the virtual exclusion of women, the feminine and the private sphere from legal discourse. Contributors to this volume offer a range of ways of thinking about the subject and cover topics such as the feminine offeree, feminist perspectives on contracts in cyberspace, the forgotten world of women and contracts, restitution and feminist economic theory, the gendered power dynamics of undue influence, and the feminisation of dispute resolution.
Articles
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Allan H. Macurdy, Classical Nostalgia: Racism, Contract Ideology, and Formalist Legal Reasoning in Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 18 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 987 (1990).
Angela Mae Kupenda, Making Traditional Courses More Inclusive: Confessions of an African American Female Professor Who Attempted to Crash All the Barriers at Once, 31 U. of S.F. L. Rev. 975 (1997).
Emily M.S. Houh, Critical Race Realism: Re-Claiming the Antidiscrimination Principle Through the Doctrine of Good Faith in Contract Law, 66 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 455 (2005).
Diane J. Klein, Paying Eliza: Comity, Contracts, and Critical Race Theory—19th Century Choice of Law Doctrine and the Validation of Antebellum Contracts for the Purchase and Sale of Human Beings, 20 Nat'l Black L.J. 1 (2006).
David R. Dow, Law School Feminist Chic and Respect for Persons: Comments on Contract Theory and Feminism in "The Flesh-Colored Band Aid", 28 Hous. L. Rev. 818 (1991).
Amy H. Kastely, Out of the Whiteness: On Race Codes and White Race Consciousness in Some Tort, Criminal, and Contract Law, 63 U. Cin. L. Rev. 269 (1994).