ABSTRACT
Contracts are made to be relied on; contract law makes them more reliable. But most theorists of contract law seem to treat reliance as a happy by-product rather than as a central element in the understanding of contractual obligation. Charles Fried wrote Contract as Promise to refute the idea that contract law’s central purpose is to protect victims from injury incurred through reliance. Since then, most self-consciously philosophical accounts of contract law have given pride of place to voluntary acts of obligation-creation (promise, agreement, consent, transfer) and rejected the idea that reliance plays a significant role in the justification or contours of contractual obligation. Likewise, reliance seems only to have a minor place in contract law doctrine.
Reliance’s seemingly marginal position in theory and doctrine presents me with a challenge. The editors of this Handbook have asked the contributors to survey ‘the key or ongoing current debates about the topic in question’. It is not clear whether there even is an ongoing debate about reliance. All the same, I agreed – perhaps rashly – to write this chapter and the editors have relied on my repeated assurances I will write it (mostly by passing up the opportunity to ask someone else). Not wishing to disappoint, I will try here to restart the debate over reliance by suggesting that the existing literature downplays its significance for contracts and contract law.
MacMahon, Paul, Reliance (January 16, 2023) in Mindy Chen-Wishart and Prince Saprai (eds), Research Handbook on the Philosophy of Contract Law (Elgar Publishing) Forthcoming.
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