Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-2004

Abstract

I ended Contracts Without Consent: Exploring a New Basis for Contract Liability with a reminder that the analysis was "lacking in rigor and in nuance" and that "[i]t remains for future work to explore the extent to which the approach developed. . . has the horsepower to resolve pragmatically the problems that have proven difficult for current doctrine and to examine whether these solutions advance the various social objectives associated with contract formation." Such "future work" arrived sooner than I expected. I have now had the privilege to read the three commentaries that the University of Pennsylvania Law Review solicited, three razor-sharp critiques, producing precisely what I hoped would follow: an exploration, balanced with both theoretical nuance and empirical pragmatism, of the implications that flow from the no-retraction regime. And I may ultimately have to concede that much is still unresolved (or at least not convincingly resolved) by the proposed regime. But before we reembrace the traditional way of thinking about contracts, it may be worth our while to take a moment to understand the scope and the validity of the critiques and to determine whether a fine-tuned account of the noretraction regime emerges with the aid of such understanding.


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