Contract as Empowerment

As a courtesy to Professor Kar, who is visiting with the University of Chicaco Law School, I promised to post a snippet about his new article, which addresses some of the issues we have discussed on this blog during my tenure as editor here:

Contract as Empowerment offers a novel view of contract law. The article pictures it neither as a mere mechanism to promote efficiency nor a mere reflection of any familiar moral norm — such as norms of promise keeping, property, or corrective justice. Contract law is instead a mechanism of empowerment: it empowers people to use legally enforceable promises as tools to influence other people’s actions and thereby meet a broad range of human needs and interests. It also empowers people in a special way, which reflects a moral ideal of equal respect for persons. This fact explains why contract law can produce genuine legal obligations and is not just a system of coercion. By blending philosophical, economic, and doctrinal insights, Kar offers a fundamental reinterpretation of modern markets and the basic principles that allow them to operate. Download the article here.