INTRODUCTION

The freedom to enter into and realize the benefits of legally valid contracts is a fundamental freedom recognized in all developed Western societies. Without this freedom, countless choices in the planning and conduct of economic and other activities of life would simply not be open. Individuals would be far less autonomous. Scope for individual self-realization would be vastly diminished. Goods, services, real property, and much else could not be bought and sold in the ordinary ways. Free market economic activity could not flourish.

Contracts and property interests are major functional units in Western legal systems. They are species of nonpreceptual law, and take their own overall forms. As we will see, these forms are very different from the forms of rules and other preceptual law. The forms of contracts and property interests also differ greatly from the institutional forms of legislatures and of courts. Here, then, we focus not on contracts and property as branches of substantive law, but rather on the distinctive overall forms of these two important types of nonpreceptual law. Because many see such “law” as consisting only of substantive content without form, a major corrective is required here, too.

The legal systems of developed Western societies fully recognize discrete contracts.