Regulating Contracts

by Hugh Collins

Overview

Using an interdisciplinary approach involving economics, sociology, and law, this book examines the purposes, efficiency, and efficacy of legal regulation of contracts and suggests how legal regulation fails and how it might be improved. The conclusions suggest that the law plays an insignificant role in the construction of markets, and that it could provide better assistance by using indeterminate regulation that permits the recontextualization of legal reasoning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199258017
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/06/2003
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	408
Product dimensions:	9.20(w) x 6.10(h) x 0.90(d)
Lexile:	1660L (what's this?)

About the Author

London School of Economics and Political Science

Table of Contents

Part 1: Introduction1. The Tasks for Regulating Contracts2. The Meaning of Contract:, How Contract Thinks About Association; Contractualization of Social Life; Meaning of Contractual Relations; EmbeddednessPart 2: The New Regulation3. The Discourses of Legal Regulation:, Normative Complexity; Self-reference and Closure; The Doctrinal Classification System; The Collision of Private Law with Public Regulation; The Productive Disintegration of Private Law4. The Capacity of Private Law:, Private Law as Regulation; Reflexive Regulation; Standard Setting; Monitoring and Enforcement; ConclusionPart 3: Regulation in the Construction of Markets5. The Construction of Markets:, Trust and Sanctions; Markets Without a State; The Construction of Trust; The Construction of Non-legal Sanctions; The Significance of Legal Sanctions; The Adjudication Process; Conclusion6. Rationality of Contractual Behaviour:, Three Frameworks of Contractual Behaviour; The Non-Use of Contracts; Relational and Discrete Contracts; Reasonable Expectations7. Planning and Co-operation:, Lawyers as Engineers; Informality in Business Dealings; Incompleteness in Planning Documents; Risk; Insufficient Specificity of Self-regulation; Flexibility; Conclusion8. Formalism and Efficiency:, The Form of Legal Doctrine; Closure and Expectation; Commercial Arbitration; Reasoning in the Common Law; The Virus of Formalism; A Transformation in Legal Doctrine?9. Contract as Thing:, Money; Formality; Legal Pluralism; Futures Contracts; Club Markets; Self-regulating AssociationsPart 4: Distributive Tasks of Regulation10. Power and Governance:, Mass Contracts; Principal and Agent; Contract and Organisation; Conclusion11. Unfair Contracts:, The Illusion of Unfairness; Open Texture Rules; Regulatory Backfiring; The Adequacy of Regulating Market Failure; Conclusion12. Quality:, Efficient Level of Quality; Form of Standards; Monitoring and Enforcement; Conclusion13. Government by Contract:, Public Services and the Market Mechanism; The Problem of Co-operation; The Problem of Quality; Quasi-Contract in Government; Conclusion14. Dispute Settlement:, The Taste for Litigation; Vindication of Contractual Rights; Access to Justice; For Settlement15. ConclusionBibliographyTable of CasesTable of StatutesIndex