Contract as Promise - Hardcover

Fried, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674169255 ISBN 13: 9780674169258

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1981

Synopsis

This book displays the underlying structure of a complex body of law and integrates that structure with moral principles.

Charles Fried grounds the basic legal institution of contract in the morality of promise, under which individuals incur obligations freely by invoking each other's trust. Contract law and the promise principle are contrasted to the socially imposed obligations of compensation, restitution, and sharing, which determine the other basic institutions of private law, and which come into control where the parties have not succeeded in invoking the promise principle--as in the case of mistake or impossibility. Professor Fried illustrates his argument with a wide range of concrete examples; and opposing views of contract law are discussed in detail, particularly in connection with the doctrines of good faith, duress, and unconscionability.

For law students and legal scholars, Contract as Promise offers a coherent survey of an important legal concept. For philosophers and social scientists, the book is a unique demonstration of the practical and detailed entailments of moral theory.

About this title

About the Author:

Charles Fried is Beneficial Professor of Law, Harvard University.

Review:

Charles Fried has written a very sensible, readable, and important book. To have someone argue for the importance of moral reasoning in contracts, or for that matter any common law subject, is refreshing. To have it done well is a real treat.
--Richard Epstein

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1981
• ISBN 10: 0674169255
• ISBN 13: 9780674169258
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 174