Legal Commentary

My third big article in my friendship & law research agenda is now available from SSRN.  It is forthcoming in Volume 59 of the Emory Law Journal.  Here is an abstract:

This article aims to give the relational theory of contract some new life, sharpening some of its claims against its competitors by refracting its theory of relational contracts through an analogy to friendship. In drawing the analogy between friendships and relational contracts and revealing their morphological similarities, I offer a provocative window into friendship's contractual structure - and into relational contracts' approximation of friendships. The analogy I develop in the article is poised to replace the "relational contract as marriage" model, prevalent among relationalists. The new model developed here is more honest to relational contract theory and to marriage - and helps relational contract theory produce some new insights, support old ones, and revise some of its normative agenda.

The first two articles are available here (54 UCLA L Rev 631) and here (86 Wash U L Rev 665).  There is some interesting work coming out of business schools these days about business friendships but my thinking on that subject has not yet made it into this draft.  I'm still not sure exactly what I think about this work -- and didn't have space in my 35,000 words anyway.  But stay tuned for more engagment on this work.