Introducing contract law, volume one of this text treats remedies for breach of contract, contract and continuing relations, and social control of free contract. Chapters in volume two cover formation of contract; incomplete planning; flexibility and enforceability; closing a deal; and more.

This book represents a unique resource about Stewart Macaulay one of the common law world’s leading scholars of the law of contract and of the law in action approach to the study of law. Since 1959, he has published over 50 articles in leading journals, a number of working papers, (with colleagues at the University of Wisconsin Law School) a pathbreaking casebook for the teaching of the law of contract, and (with other colleagues) equally pathbreaking collections of materials for the teaching of the law in action or law in context approach to the study of law. In this work Macaulay has established himself as one of the postwar world’s leading scholars of the law of contract and of the sociology of law. His work is an absolute reference point in both disciplines, and it has attracted great attention elsewhere, most notably in economic sociology, where his concept of non-contractual economic relationships is regarded as an important theoretical innovation. Macaulay’s work has become an object of commentary in its own right, and the proposed book is intended to assist further such commentary by making hitherto difficult to obtain works readily accessible. Most of Macaulay’s work is now, when the leading journals are generally available in electronic form, readily accessible to students and researchers in universities. There are, however, a number of interesting and in most cases important works published in less accessible journals or works which were not published in an electronic form, which are difficult to obtain. This book will make them readily available, and in so doing will make it possible in future for scholars to have Macaulay’s complete oeuvre readily to hand. Although Macaulay’s work has provoked very considerable discussion, there previously have been no overall accounts of that work as opposed to critical engagements with aspects of it. In this book, two additional essays by leading commentators give accounts of Macaulay’s work and provide an introduction to, exegesis of and general evaluation of Macaulay’s work as a whole which is not to be found in the existing literature.

“One of the most important contributions to the field of contract theory—if not the most important—in the past 25 years.” —Stephen A. Smith, McGill University Can we account for contract law on a moral basis that is acceptable from the standpoint of liberal justice? To answer this question, Peter Benson develops a theory of contract that is completely independent of—and arguably superior to—long-dominant views, which take contract law to be justified on the basis of economics or promissory morality. Through a detailed analysis of contract principles and doctrines, Benson brings out the specific normative conception underpinning the whole of contract law. Contract, he argues, is best explained as a transfer of rights, which is complete at the moment of agreement and is governed by a definite conception of justice—justice in transactions. Benson’s analysis provides what John Rawls called a public basis of justification, which is as essential to the liberal legitimacy of contract as to any other form of coercive law. The argument of Justice in Transactions is expressly complementary to Rawls’s, presenting an original justification designed specifically for transactions, as distinguished from the background institutions to which Rawls’s own theory applies. The result is a field-defining work offering a comprehensive theory of contract law. Benson shows that contract law is both justified in its own right and fully congruent with other domains—moral, economic, and political—of liberal society.