Contract As Promise

by Charles Fried

This book displays the underlying structure of a complex body of law and integrates that structure with moral principles. Charles Fried grounds the basic legal institution of contract in the morality of promise, under which individuals incur obligations freely by invoking each other's trust. Contract law and the promise principle are contrasted to the socially imposed obligations of compensation, restitution, and sharing, which determine the other basic institutions of private law, and which come into control where the parties have not succeeded in invoking the promise principle--as in the case of mistake or impossibility. Professor Fried illustrates his argument with a wide range of concrete examples; and opposing views of contract law are discussed in detail, particularly in connection with the doctrines of good faith, duress, and unconscionability. For law students and legal scholars, Contract as Promise offers a coherent survey of an important legal conce

Genres: Law, Nonfiction, Philosophy

Paperback

First published May 11, 1981

About the author

Charles Fried is a prominent American jurist and lawyer. He served as United States Solicitor General from 1985 to 1989. He is currently a professor at Harvard Law School. He is sometimes described as a conservative, but his political views are perhaps better characterized as consonant with those of classical liberalism.

Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1935, Fried became a United States citizen in 1948. After studying at the Lawrenceville School and receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree from Princeton University in 1956, he attended Oxford University, where he earned a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in Law in 1958 and 1960, respectively, and was awarded the Ordronnaux Prize in Law (1958). In 1960, Fried received the Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Columbia Law School, where he was a Stone Scholar.

Fried is admitted to the bars of the United States Supreme Court, United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and numerous U.S. courts of appeals. He has served as counsel to a number of major law firms and clients, and in that capacity argued several major cases, perhaps the most important being Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceutical Co., both in the Supreme Court and in the Ninth Circuit on remand.

Fried's government service includes a year as Special Assistant to the Attorney General of the United States (1984-85) and a consulting relationship to that office (1983), as well as advisory roles with the Department of Transportation (1981-83) and President Ronald Reagan (1982). In October 1985, President Reagan appointed Fried as Solicitor General of the United States. Fried had previously served as Deputy Solicitor General and Acting Solicitor General. As Solicitor General, he represented the Reagan Administration before the Supreme Court in 25 cases. In 1989, when Reagan left office, Fried returned to Harvard Law School.

From September 1995 until June 1999, Fried served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, while teaching constitutional law at Harvard Law School as a Distinguished Lecturer. Prior to joining the court, Fried held the chair of Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence at Harvard Law School. On July 1, 1999, he returned to Harvard Law School as a fulltime member of the faculty and Beneficial Professor of Law. He has served on the Harvard Law School faculty since 1961, teaching courses on appellate advocacy, commercial law, constitutional law, contracts, criminal law, federal courts, labor law, torts, legal philosophy, and medical ethics.

Fried has published extensively. He is the author of seven books and over thirty journal articles, and his work has appeared in over a dozen collections. Unusually for a law professor without a graduate degree in philosophy, he has published significant work in moral and political theory only indirectly related to the law; Right and Wrong, for instance is an impressive general statement of a Kantian position in ethics with affinities with the work of Thomas Nagel, John Rawls, and Robert Nozick. Fried has been Orgain Lecturer at the University of Texas (1982), Tanner Lecturer on Human Values at Stanford University (1981), and Harris Lecturer on Medical Ethics at the Harvard Medical School (1974-75). He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1971-72. Fried is a member of the National Academy of Sciences's Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Law Institute.

In September 2005, Fried testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of the nomination of John Roberts to become Chief Justice of the United States. After the nomination of Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court, Fried praised Alito as an outstanding judge but dismissed claims that Alito is radical, saying, "He is conservative, yes, but he is not radically conservative like Scalia." Fried testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of

Reviews

[Hugo Fostin Hokianto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the refutations (maybe rejection is the more proper word) from the main idea of the book from another Distinguished/well known people involved in Law, I think this book suggests a good idea of what contract should be, a two party agreement based on trust, to become a promise where both party having a commitment to do what's written on the contract.

This book is not easy to read, however, as it contains many Latin words that will confuse readers at first glance. Another issue that I have from the book is the fact that special cases in the book would confuse readers who do not have basic knowledge in Law (which is my issue, so I might be biased with the issue I have in this book). But, despite all of these, I think this is a great book, and would serve as an introduction book in Law, specifically on contracts, it's Law and the cases that could happen in a contract. However, take this review with a pinch of salt, as I'm not involved with any study related to it. I'm reading this solely because I find Contracts a crucial topic for my academic study, and I might read additional books regarding this topic specifically.

Thank you to the Author Charles Fried for writing this book, it was a pleasure to read, for its an educating book.

[Harry Harman]

To make the owner of the hardware store or the manufacturer of the bolt responsible for large damages in this case seems unfair. One can say that this is because they could not foresee harm of this magnitude arising out of their conduct. (A tort locution: The man who negligently jostles a package containing a bomb could not foresee and is not responsible for harm of the ensuing magnitude when the package explodes.) But one can as well cast the matter again in contractual terms, saying that they did not undertake this measure of responsibility. After all, if in the f irst version of this example the buyer and manufacturer had agreed that manufacturer would be responsible only up to a certain amount, say ten times the cost of the bolt, such a limitation would generally be respected.

[Patrick Dwyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Struggle through it if you don't normally read law/philosophy. An important insight into why and how promise underpins all contractual obligations.

[Andrea Agnese · Rating 5 out of 5]

I attended his Harvard’s course on EDX, and this book is the companion to that course. Very interesting book, as well as the course.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took me away from "battle of the forms" to something that seemed more fundamental.

[Ben Rothman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is slightly theoretically but still a good primer on contract law for people thinking about going to law school.