Readership: Academics and students of contract law, regulation, comparative law and legal theory, economics and sociology
Hugh Collins, London School of Economics and Political Science
"Review from previous edition Regulating Contracts is the most innovative and important book on contract written in this country since The Rise and Fall of Freedom of Contract." - David Campbell Oxford Journal of Legal Studies Vol. 20 2000
Part 1: Introduction 1: The Tasks for Regulating Contracts 2: The Meaning of Contract:- How Contract Thinks About Association; Contractualization of Social Life; Meaning of Contractual Relations; Embeddedness Part 2: The New Regulation 3: 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 Law 4: The Capacity of Private Law:- Private Law as Regulation; Reflexive Regulation; Standard Setting; Monitoring and Enforcement; Conclusion Part 3: Regulation in the Construction of Markets 5: 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; Conclusion 6: Rationality of Contractual Behaviour:- Three Frameworks of Contractual Behaviour; The Non-Use of Contracts; Relational and Discrete Contracts; Reasonable Expectations 7: Planning and Co-operation:- Lawyers as Engineers; Informality in Business Dealings; Incompleteness in Planning Documents; Risk; Insufficient Specificity of Self-regulation; Flexibility; Conclusion 8: 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 Associations Part 4: Distributive Tasks of Regulation 10: Power and Governance:- Mass Contracts; Principal and Agent; Contract and Organization; Conclusion 11: Unfair Contracts:- The Illusion of Unfairness; Open Texture Rules; Regulatory Backfiring; The Adequacy of Regulating Market Failure; Conclusion 12: Quality:- Efficient Level of Quality; Form of Standards; Monitoring and Enforcement; Conclusion 13: Government by Contract:- Public Services and the Market Mechanism; The Problem of Co-operation; The Problem of Quality; Quasi-Contract in Government; Conclusion 14: Dispute Settlement:- The Taste for Litigation; Vindication of Contractual Rights; Access to Justice; For Settlement 15: Conclusion Bibliography Table of Cases Table of Statutes Index
