Contracts and Markets: A Very Short Essay Without Footnotes

Abstract

Contract law is the quintessential law of a market economy. Strangely enough, however, the idea of markets plays a relatively minor role in contemporary contract law theory. This essay suggests that the purpose of contract law is to sustain markets as a social institution and shows how such a focus on markets qua markets might illuminate discussions of the law of contracts. This essay is only a sketch of an argument. I have kept it deliberately short (16 pages) and free of scholarly apparatus (no footnotes) in order to facilitate reading and feedback.

Keywords: markets, promise, contract, liberalism, jurisprudence