ContractsProf Blog

Spring Contracts Conference: Day One

The 2010 Spring Contracts Conference begins today at UNLV's William S. Boyd School of Law.  Here's Friday's line-up:

The Contract Law System and Power – Past, Present, and Future

Chair: Jay M. Feinman (Rutgers-Camden)

Hila Keren (Hebrew U. of Jerusalem), Considering Affective Consideration

Nancy S. Kim (Cal Western), ‘Wrap Contracts as Sword, Shield, Crook, and Drawbridge

Amy J. Schmitz (Colorado), Pizza-Box Contracting: An Empirical Exploration of Consent

Danielle Kie Hart (Southwestern), Smoke, Mirrors & Contract Law

Incomplete Information and Contract Law

Chair: Keith A. Rowley (UNLV)

Robert Anderson (Pepperdine), Information, Incentives, and Disclosure in the Law of Contracts

H. Allen Blair (Hamline), No-Reliance Clauses

Yair Listokin (Yale), Bayesian Interpretation

Shawn J. Bayern (Florida State), Rational Ignorance, Rational Closed-Mindedness, and Modern Economic Formalism in Contract Law

Contract Law’s Intersection with Business Law

Chair: Nancy B. Rapoport (UNLV)

Daniel S. Kleinberger (William Mitchell), Battle Report from the Undiscovered Territory – The Law of “Contractual Organizations” Continues its Silent War on the Common Law of Contract

Andrew A. Schwartz (Colorado), A “Standard Clause Analysis” of the Frustration Doctrine and the Material Adverse Change Clause

Lydie N. Pierre-Louis (St. Thomas (FL)), Mini-Tender Offers: The Lack of Federal Jurisdiction and the Failure of Fundamental Contract Law Principles to Protect Investors

Keynote: Omri Ben-Shahar (U. of Chicago), The Failure of Mandated Disclosure

Arbitration and Unconscionability in Rent-a-Center West v. Jackson and Elsewhere

Chair: Jean R. Sternlight (UNLV)

Charles L. Knapp (UC-Hastings), Blowing the Whistle on Mandatory Arbitration: Unconscionability as a Signaling Device

Karen Halverson Cross (John Marshall (IL)), Letting the Arbitrator Decide?  Unconscionability and the Allocation of Authority Between Courts and Arbitrators

Christopher R. Drahozal (Kansas), Rent-A-Center and Institutional Arbitration Rules

Thomas J. Stipanowich (Pepperdine), Contracts and Conflict Management: Another Look

Forming Contracts and Similar Relationships

Chair: James W. Fox, Jr. (Stetson)

Michael Pratt (Queen's U. (Ontario)), What is a Promise?

Val D. Ricks (South Texas), The Continued Relevance of Consideration

Janet Ainsworth (Seattle), Beyond Status and Contract: Relational Estoppel as a Source of Rights and Obligations in Intimate Relationships

Andrea B. Carroll (LSU), Reviving Proxy Marriage

Vive la Différence!: Comparative Contract Theory

Chair: Daniel D. Barnhizer (Michigan State)

Robin J. Effron (Brooklyn), Revisiting The Death of Contract: Gilmore’s Thesis in Comparative Perspective

Wayne R. Barnes (Texas Wesleyan), French Subjective Theory of Contract: Separating Rhetoric from Reality

Tadas Klimas (Kaunas, Lithuania), Lessons American and Continental Contract Theory Can Teach One Another

Franklin G. Snyder (Texas Wesleyan), Cross-Cultural Adoption of Legal Rules: The Case ofHadley v. Baxendale

[Keith A. Rowley]

Mutual Mistake in Vanity Fair?

In Chapter 32 of William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Jos Sedley, whom Thakeray describes as a "very stout, puffy man, in buckskins and Hessian boots," panics that the allied forces had been overrun in Belgium and that Napoleon's army will give no quarter to British men, even if, like Jos, they happen to be civilians.  He therefore rambles around Brussels in search of a horse that can carry his portly frame out of the city.  He thus falls prey once again to Thackeray's leading character, not to say heroine, Rebecca Sharp, who just happens to be in possession of two fine horses to sell. 

Jos seldom spent a half-hour in his life which cost him so much money. Rebecca, measuring the value of the goods which she had for sale by Jos's eagerness to purchase, as well as by the scarcity of the article, put upon her horses a price so prodigious as to make even the civilian draw back.

As it turns out, the allies had not been overrun and the need for flight was not what either Jos or Rebecca took it to be.  Could Jos escape his promise to pay Rebecca in reliance on the doctrine of mutual mistake?

[Jeremy Telman]

Weekly Top Ten from the Social Science Research Network

 RECENT HITS (for all papers announced in the last 60 days) 
TOP 10 Papers for Journal of Contracts & Commercial Law 
December 26, 2009 to February 24, 2010

Rank	Downloads	Paper Title
1	322	Choice of Law in the American Courts in 2009: Twenty-Third Annual Survey  Symeon C. Symeonides,  Willamette University - College of Law
2	220	The Foundations of a Market Economy: Contract, Consent, Coercion  Yulie Foka-Kavalieraki, Aristides N. Hatzis,  University of Athens, Department of Philosophy & History of Science , University of Athens - Department of Philosophy & History of Science
3	186	The Core Nature of Fiduciary Accountability  Robert Flannigan,  University of Saskatchewan
4	144	Bayesian Contractual Interpretation  Yair Listokin,  Yale Law School
5	118	The Evolution of Contract Remedies (and Why Do Contracts Professors Teach Remedies First?)  George G. Triantis,  Harvard University - Harvard Law School
6	116	Fixing the Home Affordable Modification Program to Mitigate the Foreclosure Crisis  Jean Braucher,  University of Arizona - James E. Rogers College of Law
7	112	On and Off Contract Remedies  Richard R. W. Brooks, Alexander Stremitzer,  Yale University - Law School, Yale Law School
8	101	The Ethics of Contract Drafting  Gregory M. Duhl,  William Mitchell College of Law
9	97	The Coaching Carousel in Big-Time Intercollegiate Athletics: Economic Implications and Legal Considerations  Richard T. Karcher,  Florida Coastal School of Law
10	84	After the Storm: Asymmetrical Information, Game Theory, and an Examination of the 'Minnesota Model' for National Regulation of Mortgage Brokers and Tomorrow's Predatory Lenders  Mark Ireland,  Hamline University - School of Law [Jeremy Telman]

Spring Conference Program Available

As Keith is likely too busy gearing up for the conference he is hosting to post here, I am providing a link to the program for the Spring 2010 contracts conference to be held at the end of the week at UNLV's William S. Boyd School of Law.  

We at the blog are very excited about this conference, as everyone on our masthead will be in attendance.  The program looks great, so we all hope to emerge enlightened, energized, and re-dedicated to never getting near a slot machine again.

[Jeremy Telman]