Contracts, Promises and the Demands of Moral Agency
Contracts, Promises and the Demands of Moral Agency

Author: Emmanuel Voyiakis

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 18

ISBN-13:

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If we set out to justify our contract law to a moral agent, what kind of story should we be aiming to provide? Or, to sharpen the question, if we cast a critical eye on our contract law, what should we take as its proper moral measure? Should we test contract law for its effectiveness in protecting the moral rights of promisees and enforcing the moral duties of promisors? Should we test it for its ability to make efficient use of the community's resources? Should we test it for its ability to bring about just distributions? Or should we test for its ability to make us more autonomous? As these different views claim the same justificatory space, moral agents intent on scrutinizing contract law face a problem of 'perspective' at the start of their enquiry. My aim in this paper is to discuss how general moral theory, and our intuitions about decent moral agency and responsibility in particular, might help moral agents respond to this problem. Taking issue with Seana Shiffrin's recent account, I argue that the appeal to moral agency and responsibility underdetermines the most pressing aspects of that problem.

Contract as Promise
Contract as Promise

Author: Charles Fried

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015-04-15

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 0190240172

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Contract as Promise is a study of the philosophical foundations of contract law in which Professor Fried effectively answers some of the most common assumptions about contract law and strongly proposes a moral basis for it while defending the classical theory of contract. This book provides two purposes regarding the complex legal institution of the contract. The first is the theoretical purpose to demonstrate how contract law can be traced to and is determined by a small number of basic moral principles. At the theory level the author shows that contract law does have an underlying, and unifying structure. The second is a pedagogic purpose to provide for students the underlying structure of contract law. At this level of doctrinal exposition the author shows that structure can be referred to moral principles. Together the two purposes support each other in an effective and comprehensive study of contract law. This second edition retains the original text, and includes a new Preface. It also includes a substantial new essay entitled Contract as Promise in the Light of Subsequent Scholarship--Especially Law and Economics which serves as a retrospective of the work accomplished in the last thirty years, while responding to present and future work in the field.

Promises and Agreements
Promises and Agreements

Author: Hanoch Sheinman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-01-24

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 0199703272

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Promises and agreements are everywhere; we make, receive, keep, and break them on a daily basis. The quest to understand these social practices is integral to understanding ourselves as social creatures. The study of promises and agreements is enjoying a renaissance in many areas of social philosophy, including philosophy of language, action theory, normative ethics, value theory, and legal philosophy. This volume is the first collection of philosophical papers on promises and agreements, bringing together sixteen original self-standing contributions to the philosophical literature. The contributors highlight some of the more interesting aspects of the ubiquitous social phenomena of promises and agreements from different philosophical perspectives.

Contract Law and Social Morality
Contract Law and Social Morality

Author: Peter M. Gerhart

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-02-18

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1009038729

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When people in a relationship disagree about their obligations to each other, they need to rely on a method of reasoning that allows the relationship to flourish while advancing each person's private projects. This book presents a method of reasoning that reflects how people reason through disagreements and how courts create doctrine by reasoning about the obligations arising from the relationship. Built on the ideal of the other-regarding person, Contract Law and Social Morality displays a method of reasoning that allows one person to integrate their personal interests with the interests of another, determining how divergent interests can be balanced against each other. Called values-balancing reasoning, this methodology makes transparent the values at stake in a disagreement, and provides a neutral and objective way to identify and evaluate the trade-offs that are required if the relationship is to be sustained or terminated justly.

Justice in Transactions
Justice in Transactions

Author: Peter Benson

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2019-12-03

Total Pages: 625

ISBN-13: 0674237595

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Legal thinkers typically justify contract law on the basis of economics or promissory morality. But Peter Benson takes another approach. He argues that contract is best explained as a transfer of rights governed by a conception of justice. The result is a comprehensive theory of contract law congruent with Rawlsian liberalism.

Philosophical Foundations of Contract Law
Philosophical Foundations of Contract Law

Author: Gregory Klass

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2014-12-18

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 019102208X

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In recent years there has been a revival of interest in the philosophical study of contract law. In 1981 Charles Fried claimed that contract law is based on the philosophy of promise and this has generated what is today known as 'the contract and promise debate'. Cutting to the heart of contemporary discussions, this volume brings together leading philosophers, legal theorists, and contract lawyers to debate the philosophical foundations of this area of law. Divided into two parts, the first explores general themes in the contract theory literature, including the philosophy of promising, the nature of contractual obligation, economic accounts of contract law, and the relationship between contract law and moral values such as personal autonomy and distributive justice. The second part uses these philosophical ideas to make progress in doctrinal debates, relating for example to contract interpretation, unfair terms, good faith, vitiating factors, and remedies. Together, the essays provide a picture of the current state of research in this revitalized area of law, and pave the way for future study and debate.

Promises, Morals, and Law
Promises, Morals, and Law

Author: P. S. Atiyah

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1981

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13:

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This is an analysis of the nature of promissory obligations. The subject is one which has attracted a great deal of attention among both moral and linguistic philosophers, but the book contends that much of the philosophical literature is flawed by its unreality and unfamiliarity with the serious problems that arise from the practice of promising.

Law, Economics, and Morality
Law, Economics, and Morality

Author: Eyal Zamir

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010-02-24

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 0199707200

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Law, Economics, and Morality examines the possibility of combining economic methodology and deontological morality through explicit and direct incorporation of moral constraints into economic models. Economic analysis of law is a powerful analytical methodology. However, as a purely consequentialist approach, which determines the desirability of acts and rules solely by assessing the goodness of their outcomes, standard cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is normatively objectionable. Moderate deontology prioritizes such values as autonomy, basic liberties, truth-telling, and promise-keeping over the promotion of good outcomes. It holds that there are constraints on promoting the good. Such constraints may be overridden only if enough good (or bad) is at stake. While moderate deontology conforms to prevailing moral intuitions and legal doctrines, it is arguably lacking in methodological rigor and precision. Eyal Zamir and Barak Medina argue that the normative flaws of economic analysis can be rectified without relinquishing its methodological advantages and that moral constraints can be formalized so as to make their analysis more rigorous. They discuss various substantive and methodological choices involved in modeling deontological constraints. Zamir and Medina propose to determine the permissibility of any act or rule infringing a deontological constraint by means of mathematical threshold functions. Law, Economics, and Morality presents the general structure of threshold functions, analyzes their elements and addresses possible objections to this proposal. It then illustrates the implementation of constrained CBA in several legal fields, including contract law, freedom of speech, antidiscrimination law, the fight against terrorism, and legal paternalism.

The Second-Person Standpoint
The Second-Person Standpoint

Author: Stephen Darwall

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-09-30

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 0674034627

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Why should we avoid doing moral wrong? The inability of philosophy to answer this question in a compelling manner—along with the moral skepticism and ethical confusion that ensue—result, Stephen Darwall argues, from our failure to appreciate the essentially interpersonal character of moral obligation. After showing how attempts to vindicate morality have tended to change the subject—falling back on non-moral values or practical, first-person considerations—Darwall elaborates the interpersonal nature of moral obligations: their inherent link to our responsibilities to one another as members of the moral community. As Darwall defines it, the concept of moral obligation has an irreducibly second-person aspect; it presupposes our authority to make claims and demands on one another. And so too do many other central notions, including those of rights, the dignity of and respect for persons, and the very concept of person itself. The result is nothing less than a fundamental reorientation of moral theory that enables it at last to account for morality’s supreme authority—an account that Darwall carries from the realm of theory to the practical world of second-person attitudes, emotions, and actions.

Contract as Promise
Contract as Promise

Author: Charles Fried

Publisher:

Published: 1981

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 9780674169302

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This book has two purposes: a theoretical purpose, to show how a complex legal institution, contract, can be traced to and is determined by a small number of basic moral principles; and a pedagogic purpose, to display for students the underlying structure of this basic legal institution. The author argues that that the promise principle - that principle by which persons can impose upon themselves obligations where none existed before - is the moral basis of contract law.