Calculating Promises. The Emergence of Modern American Contract Doctrine
This book is a history of American contract law around the turn of
the twentieth century. It meticulously details shifts in our conception
of contract by juxtaposing scholarly accounts of contract with case
law, and shows how the cases exhibit conflicts for which scholarship
offers just one of many possible answers.
Breaking with
conventional wisdom, the author argues that our current understanding of
contract is not the outgrowth of gradual refinements of a centuries-old
idea. Rather, contract as we now know it was shaped by a revolution in
private law undertaken toward the end of the nineteenth century, when
legal scholars established calculating promisors as the centerpiece of
their notion of contract.
The author maintains that the revolution
in contract thinking is best understood in a frame of reference wider
than the rules governing the formation and enforcement of contracts.
That frame of reference is a cultural negotiation over the nature of the
individual subject and the role of the individual in a society
undergoing transformation. Areas of central concern include the
enforceability of promises to make gifts; the relationship of contracts
to speculation and gambling; and the problem of incomplete contracts.
