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Comparative Contract Law

Comparative Contract Law

Research Handbooks in Comparative Law series
Edited by Pier Giuseppe Monateri, Professor of Comparative Law, Department of Law, University of Turin, Italy
This comprehensive Handbook offers a thoughtful survey of contract theories, issues and cases in order to reassess the field's present vision of contract law. It engages a critical search for the fault lines which cross traditions of thought and globalized landscapes. Comparative Contract Law is built around four main groups of insights, including: the genealogies of contractual theoretical thinking; the contentious relationship between private governance and normative regulations; the competing styles used to stage contract law; and the concurring opinions expressed within the domain of other disciplines, such as literature and political theory. The chapters in the book tease out the tensions between a global context and local frameworks as well as the movable thresholds between canonical expressions and heterodox constructions.

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Extent: 576 pp
Hardback Price: $260.00 Web: $234.00
Publication Date: 2017
ISBN: 978 1 84980 451 6
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Paperback Price: $69.95 Web: $55.96
Publication Date: 2018
ISBN: 978 1 78536 953 7
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This comprehensive book offers a thoughtful survey of theories, issues and cases in order to reassess the present vision of contract law. ‘Comparative’ refers both to the specific kind of methodologies implied and to the polyphonic perspectives collected on the main topics, with the aim of superseding the conventional forms of representation. In this perspective, the work engages a critical search for the fault lines, which crosses traditions of thought and globalized landscapes.

Notwithstanding contract’s enduring presence and the technicalities devoted to managing clauses and interpretation, the inquiry on the proper nature of contract and its status and collocation within private legal taxonomies continues to be a controversial exercise. Moving from a vast array of dissimilar inclinations, which have historically produced heterogeneous maps of law, this book is built around the genealogies of contractual theoretical thinking; the contentious relationship between private governance and normative regulations; the competing styles used to stage contract law; the concurring opinions expressed within the domain of other disciplines, such as literature and political theory; the tensions between global context and local frames; and the movable thresholds between canonical expressions and heterodox constructions.

For its careful analysis and the wide range of references employed, Comparative Contract Law will be a tremendous resource for academics, legal scholars and interdisciplinary experts as well as judges and law practitioners.

Critical Acclaim

‘Comparative Contract Law redefines approaches to comparative law by incorporating what might be called "internal comparative law", while also exploring transnational law, party autonomy, and the legal environment beyond states and their diverse legal systems. The book is also innovative given its inclusion of comparative studies in law and economics and law and literature, which shows that disciplines that are usually considered to be "external" to law are indeed relevant for the assessment and for the reform of law.’
– Sebastian McEvoy, University of Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, France

‘This is a cracking collection of essays, emphasising that comparative law is not simply a matter of comparing jurisdictions, but of tracing history and crossing disciplines too. Comparative Contract Law has something for everybody; the legal theorist, the legal historian, the literary jurist, the international lawyer and the common law contract lawyer. Professor Monateri and his contributors have done the discipline of critical comparative law proud. An essential read for anyone interested in exploring the intellectual parameters of contract law, past and present.’
– Ian Ward, Newcastle University, UK

Contributors

Contributors: G. Bellantuono, B.H. Bix, D. Carpi, M. Cenini, C.L. Cordasco, C. Costantini, S. Fiorato, B. Goodrich, J. Gordley, M. Granieri, A. Hutchison, B. Luppi, M.R. Marella, G. Marini, P.G. Monateri, F. Monceri, P. Moreno Cruz, H. Muir Watt, P. Pardolesi, F. Parisi, G. Samuel

















Contents

Contents:

Introduction

PART I CONTRACT LAW: THEORIES AND GENEALOGIES
1. Theories of Contract Law
Brian H. Bix

2. In Defense of Roman Contract Law
James Gordley

3. The Authoritarian Theory of Contract
Pier Giuseppe Monateri

4. Contract and the Comparatist: Should We Think About Contract in Terms of ‘Contracticles’?
Geoffrey Samuel

5. Critical Comparative Contract Law
Giovanni Marini

6. Contract Law and Regulation
Giuseppe Bellantuono

PART II MARKET VALUES AND THEIR CRITIQUES. PRIVATE GOVERNANCE AND NORMATIVE REGULATIONS
7. Enforcing Bilateral Promises: A Comparative Law and Economics Perspective
Francesco Parisi, Marta Cenini and Barbara Luppi

8. Spontaneous Order and Freedom of Contract
Carlo Ludovico Cordasco

9. “Party Autonomy”
Horatia Muir Watt

10. Who is the Contracting Party? A Trip Around the Transformation of the Legal Subject
Maria Rosaria Marella

11. Freedom of Contract and Constitutional Values: Some Exceptional Cases from the Colombian Constitutional Court
Pablo Moreno Cruz

PART III REPRESENTATIONS AND NARRATIVES
12. The Unburiable Contract. Grant Gilmore’s Discontinuous Parabola and the Literary Construction of American Legal Style
Cristina Costantini

13. Queering the Contractual Paradigm between Law and Political Theory
Flavia Monceri

14. Contracts in Literature: from Doctor Faustus to Vampires
Daniela Carpi

15. Women and contracts in Angela Carter’s Postmodern Revision of the Fairy Tale
Sidia Fiorato

PART IV GLOBAL CONTEXT AND LOCAL FRAMES
16. The Wrecking Ball. Good Faith, Preemption and US Exceptionalism
Peter Goodrich

17. Technological Contracts
Massimiliano Granieri

18. Contractual Interpretation: The South African Blend Of Common, Civil And Indigenous Law In Comparative Perspective
Andrew Hutchison

19. Promissory Estoppel
Paolo Pardolesi

20. Party Autonomy in Global Context: An International Laywer’s Take on the Political Economy of a Self-constituting Regime.
Horatia Muir Watt

Index