A Theory of Contract Law Empirical Insights and Moral Psychology

• Offers a thoughtful survey of deontological and consequentialist theories
• Presents canonical cases in doctrinal context
• Describes pertinence of moral psychology to contract doctrine
• Treats elaboration of canonical cases across transactional settings

In the past few decades, scholars have offered positive, normative, and most recently, interpretive theories of contract law. These theories have proceeded primarily (indeed, necessarily) from deontological and consequentialist premises. In A Theory of Contract Law: Empirical Understandings and Moral Psychology, Professor Peter A. Alces confronts the leading interpretive theories of contract and demonstrates their interpretive doctrinal failures. Professor Alces presents the leading canonical cases that inform the extant theories of Contract law in both their historical and transactional contexts and, argues that moral psychology provides a better explanation for the contract doctrine than do alternative comprehensive interpretive approaches.

Readership: Law students, law professors, legal scholars.