A Concept of Personal Autonomy Fit for Contract Law

Abstract

The interplays between autonomy and many areas of law are somehow evident but many times redundant and unclear. In this paper, I offer an account of personal autonomy that can be useful in reading private law phenomena, especially focusing on the doctrine of contract as promise. This doctrine, which assimilates contracts and promises, poses two challenges to the ideal of personal autonomy: first, how can autonomy justify or require the ability to be bound by promise or contract; second, how can the possibility to change one’s mind, which is a virtue of the autonomous life, be reconciled with the bond created by contracts. By defending that personal autonomy is an ideal of self-authorship, and that the autonomous person authors her own life, being emotionally and intellectually capable of committing to a sufficient variety of long- and short-term choices, which she will consider without uncalled external interferences nor impositions and with respect for a condition of integrity, I will address both concerns, aiming at proving that a thick ideal of autonomy is capable of justifying the practice of contracting and is not in opposition with the strong bond created by contracts. The debate will primarily focus on promises, and thereafter its arguments are applied to contracts’ analysis.

Keywords: contract, promise, promises, private law, autonomy, personal autonomy