Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction 1. On the Nature and Value of Promise Fried’s Argument: Convention,Social Practice, Trust Trust as a Condition Why Promise? Why Want a Promise? What is Wrong with Breaking a Promise? The Value of Promise Promises between Strangers 2. Normativity, Trust and Threats I. The Disjunctive View II. Normativity and Threats in Personal Relations 3. The Nature and Value of Contractual Relations I. Contracts and the Role of Trust II. Contracts, Promises and Special Relations 4. Remedies The Standard Remedy and the Theory of the Practice Choosing a Performance Remedy: Why Not Specific Performance? The Harm Principle and Remedies for Breach Mitigation The Freedom to Change One’s Mind 5. Freedom of Contract, Freedom from Contract I. Freedom of Contract II. Freedom from Contract Bibliography Index

About the Author

Dori Kimel is a Fellow of New College Oxford.

Reviews

…can one plausibly accept the voluntary view of contracts while rejecting their distinct promissory nature? This is precisely the position that Dori Kimel advocates in his recent, highly original and insightful book.
*Oxford Journal of Legal Studies*

Kimel's excellent book tells us much about the value of our practice of contracting, and how the benefits we receive from such a practice are not always identical to the benefits we receive from our practice of promising. He also helps us to understand how those values square with the values typically associated with perfectionist liberalism, and to that extent he makes great strides towards a liberal theory of contract.
*Modern Law Review*

... the book gives us a richer sense of what Razs tersely stated views on contract might or might not amount to. In sympathetically examining those views, and in opening up a dialogue around and about them, the author makes a useful contribution.
*Cambridge Law Journal*