JSI Seminar | Contract law and reasons for action: A crash course in private law theory

In-person event

If contract law is to be authoritative, it must mediate between the subjects of contract law and reasons for action they have. Either implicitly or explicitly, this insight informs various approaches to the theorisation of this law. Some have tried to understand contract law as mediating ordinary moral reasons relating to promising. Others have argued that this law embodies duties of private right, the sort of reasons that apply to us as independent individuals cooperating as equals. And there are others still who identify different sets of reasons for action special to the contractual relationship.

In my talk, I will identify the common flaw shared by these different theories. I will explain why focusing our attention on contract law as an exercise of political authority—rather than authoritative in the abstract—paves the way not only to a better understanding of the normative basis for contract but also the broad stakes involved in the making of contract law.

About the speaker:

Dr Arie Rosen

Arie Rosen is a legal theorist based at the University of Auckland Faculty of Law and a founding co-director of the New Zealand Centre for Legal and Political Theory. His work in legal and political philosophy focuses on political authority, the grounds for its exercise, the ideology that sustains it, and the impact it has on law and practical reasoning. His work appears in various edited volumes and leading journals, including Legal Theory, the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, the University of Toronto Law Journal, and the Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence. His current project focuses on how political authority is exercised in the context of private law and what this can teach us about constitutional structures and the core commitments of liberal political morality.

Thursday 19 October 2023, 6-7.30pm AEST

Venue: Level 4, Common Room, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus

CPD Points: 1.5

This event is proudly presented by the Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence at The University of Sydney Law School.