Document Type
Working Paper
Publication Date
2019
Abstract
This chapter restates choice theory, which advances a liberal approach to contract law. First, we refine the concept of autonomy for contract. Then we address range, limit, and floor, three principles that together justify contract law in a liberal society. The first concerns the state’s obligation to be proactive in facilitating the availability of a multiplicity of contract types. The second refers to the respect contract law owes to the autonomy of a party’s future self, that is, to the ability to re-write the story of one’s life. The final principle concerns relational justice, the baseline for any legitimate use of the contract power. We conclude this restatement of choice theory by highlighting its most important jurisprudential payoff – how our account relates to and improves on the economic analysis of contract. Choice theory is the modest price that economic analysis must pay to account for individual freedom.
Disciplines
Contracts | Jurisprudence | Law | Law and Philosophy | Public Law and Legal Theory
Recommended Citation
Michael A. Heller & Hanoch Dagan,
Choice Theory: A Restatement,
Research Handbook on Private Law Theory, Hanoch Dagan & Benjamin C. Zipursky (Eds.), Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020; Columbia Law & Economics Working Paper No. 616; Columbia Public Law Research Paper No. 14-637
(2019).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2521
Included in
Contracts Commons, Jurisprudence Commons, Law and Philosophy Commons, Public Law and Legal Theory Commons