Nonlegal Sanctioning In Private Legal Systems

Some modern-day trade associations in commodities industries have complex systems of private commercial enforcement. These associations impose nonlegal sanctions on disloyal industry actors for not complying with awards stemming from specialized commercial arbitration after a business conflict. These extrajudicial measures undermine states' rights to enact formal legal rules, and could violate US Antitrust Law and EU Competition Law. Yet, they could be viewed as a viable alternative to lengthy and expensive court litigation. This book provides best practice guidelines to highlight under what conditions nonlegal sanctions imposed by a trade association and executed by its members do not violate US Antitrust Law and EU Competition Law.

Private law has long been the focus of efforts to explain wider developments of law in an era of globalisation. As consumer transactions and corporate activities continue to develop with scant regard to legal and national boundaries, private law theorists have begun to sketch and conceptualise the possible architecture of a transnational legal theory. Drawing a detailed map of the mixed regulatory landscape of 'hard' and 'soft' laws, official, unofficial, direct and indirect modes of regulation, rules, recommendations and principles as well as exploring the concept of governance through disclosure and transparency, this book develops a theoretical framework of transnational legal regulation. Rough Consensus and Running Code describes and analyses different law-making regimes currently observable in the transnational arena. Its core aim is to reassess the transnational regulation of consumer contracts and corporate governance in light of a dramatic proliferation of rule-creators and compliance mechanisms that can no longer be clearly associated with either the 'state' or the 'market'. The chosen examples from two of the most dynamic legal fields in the transnational arena today serve as backdrops for a comprehensive legal theoretical inquiry into the changing institutional and normative landscape of legal norm-creation.

How tort, contract, and restitution law can be reformed to better serve the social good Lawyers, judges, and scholars have long debated whether incentives in tort, contract, and restitution law effectively promote the welfare of society. If these incentives were ideal, tort law would reduce the cost and frequency of accidents, contract law would lubricate transactions, and restitution law would encourage people to benefit others. Unfortunately, the incentives in these laws lead to too many injuries, too little contractual cooperation, and too few unrequested benefits. Getting Incentives Right explains how law might better serve the social good. In tort law, Robert Cooter and Ariel Porat propose that all foreseeable risks should be included when setting standards of care and awarding damages. Failure to do so causes accidents that better legal incentives would avoid. In contract law, they show that making a promise often causes the person who receives it to change behavior and undermine the cooperation between the parties. They recommend several solutions, including a novel contract called "anti-insurance." In restitution law, people who convey unrequested benefits to others are seldom entitled to compensation. Restitution law should compensate them more than it currently does, so that they will provide more unrequested benefits. In these three areas of law, Getting Incentives Right demonstrates that better law can promote the well-being of people by providing better incentives for the private regulation of conduct.

Global business interacts efficiently despite the heterogeneity of social, economic and legal cultures which, according to widespread assumptions, cause insecurities and uncertainties. Breaches of contracts may occur more frequently and business relationships may be terminated more often in international than in domestic trade. But most business people engaged in exporting or importing products or services seem to operate in a sufficiently predictable environment allowing successful ventures into the global market. The apparent paradox presented by cultural/institutional diversity and contractual efficiency in cross-border business transactions is the focus of this volume of essays. The wide range of approaches adopted by contributors to the volume include: the Weberian concept of law as a tool for avoiding the risk of opportunism; economic sociology, which treats networks and relationships between contractual parties as paramount; representatives of new institutional economics who discuss law as well as private governance institutions as most efficient responses to risk; comparative economic sociologists who point to the varieties of legal cultures in the social organisation of trust; and national and international institutions such as the World Bank which try to promote legal certainty in the economy. The purpose of the volume is to build on this interdisciplinary exercise by adding empirical evidence to ongoing debates regarding enabling structures for international business, and by critically reviewing and discussing some of the propositions in the literature which contain interesting hypotheses on the effects of the internationalization of markets on market co-ordination institutions and on the role of the state in the globalising economy.

An oft-repeated assertion within contract law scholarship and cases is that a good contract law (or a good commercial contract law) will meet the needs and expectations of commercial contractors. Despite the prevalence of this statement, relatively little attention has been paid to why this should be the aim of contract law, how these 'commercial expectations' are identified and given substance, and what precise legal techniques might be adopted by courts to support the practices and expectations of business people. This book explores these neglected issues within contract law. It examines the idea of commercial expectation, identifying what expectations commercial contractors may have about the law and their business relationships (using empirical studies of contracting behaviour), and assesses the extent to which current contract law reflects these expectations. It considers whether supporting commercial expectations is a justifiable aim of the law according to three well-established theoretical approaches to contractual obligations: rights-based explanations, efficiency-based (or economic) explanations and the relational contract critique of the classical law. It explores the specific challenges presented to contract law by modern commercial relationships and the ways in which the general rules of contract law could be designed and applied in order to meet these challenges. Ultimately the book seeks to move contract law beyond a simple dichotomy between contextualist and formalist legal reasoning, to a more nuanced and responsive legal approach to the regulation of commercial agreements.

This book introduces and develops Contract Governance as a new approach to contract theory. While the concept of governance has already been developed in Williamson's seminal article, it has, ironically, not received much attention in general contract law theory. Indeed, Contract Governance appears to be an important and necessary complement to corporate governance and in fact, as the second, equally important pillar of governance research in the core of private law. With this in mind, Grundmann, Möslein, and Riesenhuber provide a novel approach in setting an international and interdisciplinary research agenda for developing contract law scholarship. Contract Governance focuses particularly on the ways in which a governance perspective leads to research questions that have been neglected in traditional contract law scholarship, and how, from a governance perspective, the questions are dealt with in a different manner and style. Combining substantive chapters and commentaries, this collection of essays addresses an array of topics, including: third party impact and contract governance problems in herd behaviour; governance of networks of contracts; governance in long-term contractual relationships; contract governance and rule setting; and contract governance and political dimensions.

This title was first published in 2003. This volume contains essays by prominent commentators on topics in commercial law. It addresses the increasing harmonization of international commercial law and the essays demonstrate different methodologies used in analysing commercial law, such as economic and jurisprudential approaches.

The law shapes behavior not only by imposing sanctions, but also by producing information on how powerful entities behave.