International Law

Fault in Contract Law

By Eoin

From the University of Chicago School of Law Faculty Blog:

Audio/Video: Fault in Contract Law

In September, Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law Omri Ben-Shahar and Fischel-Neil Visiting Professor of Law Ariel Porat organized a conference intended to reevaluate the role of fault in contract law. Speakers included Chicago faculty Saul Levmore, Eric Posner, Richard Epstein and Judge Richard Posner, along with experts in contract law from around the world. Subscribers to our Faculty Podcast may have already heard Judge Posner’s “Let Us Never Blame a Contract Breaker,” and audio and video of the entire conference is now available on the conference website. … [Here is] Professor Ben-Shahar’s introduction to the conference …

The papers from the conference will be published in the June 2009 issue of the Michigan Law Review, and an expanded volume collection will be published later by Cambridge University Press. In the meantime, the abstracts are on the Michigan Law Review site, and here are some of the drafts I’ve been able to find online, mostly (though not exclusively) from SSRN:

Eric Posner (Chicago) Fault In Contract Law here, here
Roy Kreitner (Tel Aviv) Fault at the Contract-Tort Interface here (pdf)
Ariel Porat (Tel Aviv) A Comparative Fault Defense in Contract Law here
Saul Levmore (Chicago) Stipulated Damages, Super-Strict Liability, and the Real Rule of Contract Remedies here (pdf)
Richard Craswell (Stanford) When is Willful Breach ?Willful?? here
Oren Bar-Gill (NYU) & Omri Ben-Shahar (Chicago) An Information-Based Theory of Willful Breach here
Peter Siegelman (Connecticut) & Steven Thel (Fordham) Willfulness versus Expectation: A Promisor-Based Defense of Willful Breach Doctrine here, here (pdf), video
Stephan Grundmann (Humboldt-Berlin) The Fault Principle as the Chameleon of Contract Law: A Market Function Approach here (pdf)
Seana Shiffrin (UCLA) Why Breach of Contract May Be Immoral here (pdf)
Richard Epstein (Chicago) The Many Different Faces of Fault in Contract Law: Or How to Do Economics Right, without Really Trying here
George Cohen (Virginia) The Fault that Lies Within Our Contract Law here
Robert Scott (Columbia) In (Partial) Defense of Strict Liability in Contract here presented and discussed by Fabrizio Cafaggi (European University Institute)
Hon Richard Posner (Chicago) Let Us Never Blame a Contract Breaker here (pdf)

Full post as published by Cearta on February 13, 2009 (boomark / email).