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The Arguments in Justice in Transactions: A Reply to Commentators

  • Peter Benson EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: July 6, 2021
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Abstract

This reply addresses some of the basic questions and criticisms raised by commentators in their interesting pieces on Justice in Transactions. My aim in that book is to work out a public basis of justification for the common law of contract. Given the limits of space, the discussion here is unavoidably selective and incomplete. Within these parameters, however, the article presents, and hopefully clarifies, some of the book’s main arguments that are relevant to the comments, using the footnotes for more detailed responses to the particular points made. These points encompass both methodological and substantive issues. The former center around the nature of public justification and whether the proposed theory of contract law meets its requirements. The substantive issues addressed include the role of promises in contract law, the compatibility between contractual fairness and contractual freedom, and the relation between contract and distributive justice.


Corresponding author: Peter Benson, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, E-mail:

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Professor Florian Rodl for organizing and leading the workshop on my book at the Frei University of Berlin in November 2019, to all those who participated in it, to the contributors to this volume for their papers, and to the editors of the European Review of Contract Law who graciously agreed to publish them.


Published Online: 2021-07-06
Published in Print: 2021-06-25

© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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