No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Religion, Story and the Law of Contracts: Reply to Professor Berman
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2015
Extract
Contract law, pronounced dead within the last decade, has undergone a Lazarus-like resurrection. The revival of scholarship runs the gamut from Professor Charles Fried's writing asserting promise as “the moral basis of contract law,” through the Second Restatement of Contracts which concedes the legitimacy of more communal based doctrines such as promissory estoppel, to the writings of Professor Ian MacNeil who argues that community is “the fundamental root, the base” of contract and the even more collectivist writings of scholars in the Conference on Critical Legal Studies.
This revival of contract scholarship does not yet suggest any unifying theme, but it does, I think, indicate a vigorous search for some means of weaving together seemingly intractable concepts. This symposium on Law and Religion suggests an important area of search. That is, it invites us to examine the shared ethos of our culture.
I agree with Professor Berman's observation made elsewhere that law and religion are “two different but interrelated aspects … of social experience” and that one cannot flourish without the other. Because both law and religion are aspects of our social experience, one's view of God and the world must certainly affect one's view of the law. Similarly, one's view of the law probably affects how that person views God.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 1986
References
1. Gilmore, G., The Death of Contract (1974)Google Scholar.
2. Fried, C., Contract as Promise (1981)Google Scholar.
3. Restatement (Second) of Contracts (1981).
4. Id. § 90 (1981).
5. MacNeil, I., The New Social Contract 1 (1980)Google Scholar.
6. See, e.g., Feinman, , Promissory Estoppel and Judicial Method, 97 Harv. L. Rev. 678 (1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Feinman, , Critical Approaches to Contract Law, 30 UCLA L. Rev. 829 (1983)Google Scholar (hereinafter Critical Approaches); Horwitz, M., The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 (1977)Google Scholar; Kennedy, , Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication, 89 Harv. L. Rev. 1685 (1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Unger, , The Critical Legal Studies Movement, 96 Harv. L. Rev. 563 (1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7. Berman, H., Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition 11 (1983)Google Scholar.
8. Shaffer, , Jurisprudence in Light of the Hebraic Faith, 1 Notre Dame J. of Law, Ethics & Public Policy 77, 108 (1984)Google Scholar.
9. See Fried, supra note 2.
10. See Shaffer, supra note 8, at 77.
11. Unger, R., Passion 26 (1984)Google Scholar.
12. See Essays in the Sociology of Perception (Douglas, M. ed. 1982)Google Scholar.
13. See Unger, supra note 11, at 24.
14. Hauerwas, S., A Community of Character 66–71 (1981)Google Scholar.
15. Berman, supra note 7, at 41.
16. See Unger, supra note 6, at 567, 616-648.
17. See Feinman, supra note 6, Critical Approaches at 844-57.
18. See Fried, supra note 2.
19. Id.
20. Id.
21. Id.
22. Id.
23. See Matthew 26:36-56; Mark 14:32-50; Luke 22:39-53; John 18:1-11.
24. Berman, H., The Interaction Of Law and Religion 82 (1974)Google Scholar.
25. See Knapp, , Reliance in the Revised Restatement: The Proliferation of Promissory Estoppel, 81 Colum. L. Rev. 52 (1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26. Luke 10:30-36.
27. Perrin, N., The New Testament, an Introduction 293 (1974)Google Scholar.
28. Buber, M., Distance and Relation in The Knowledge of Man 59–71 (Smith, Ronald G. trans. 1965)Google Scholar.
29. Id.
30. Hauerwas, supra note 14, at 128.