POSTPONED - The Protean Law of Contract - John Eldridge

This event has been postponed to a later date.

 

About the seminar
Recent decades have seen many important contributions to private law theory. Indeed, the burgeoning literature in this sphere has been enriched by the attentions of some of the most able contemporary scholars of private law. Yet despite these efforts, debates as to the proper normative justifications for private rights seem as intractable as ever. 
Some of the most notable recent contributions to this literature have centred upon tort law. Here, rights-focused normative accounts - such as that proffered by Stevens - have jostled for primacy with a number of competing theoretical frameworks. Recently, this contest has been complicated by the emergence of a skeptical body of writing which queries the wisdom of any attempt to posit a unitary justification for a body of law as complex as the law of tort. John Murphy, for instance, has contended that the heterogeneity of tort law - that is, its lack of structural and juridical unity - means that unitary theoretical justifications of tort law will inevitably be reductionist in character.
The law of contract is hardly a stranger to theory. Indeed, theoretical writings in respect of the law of contract are characterised by robust debate as to the law’s normative foundations. At the same time, however, relatively little has yet been done to explore whether analyses such as Murphy’s are capable of being translated to the theoretical debates in respect of the law of contract. This paper seeks to take up this task. It seeks in particular to build on the important work of Prince Saprai, and suggests that the heterogeneity of the law of contract poses a serious challenge to many ‘top down’ theories of contract law.

This event is free and open to all. No registration necessary