Contracts: Notable Books in Main Collection

An exhaustive list of the Contracts-related titles available in the law library would be - as you can probably imagine - massive and pointless, so instead we at the library have selected a few major titles that run the gamut of material a student is likely to encounter in our collection. Our full collection can be browsed either via the University's online library catalog or in person in the 3rd Floor stacks, around KF801.

 The Fall and Rise of Freedom of Contract edited by F.H. Buckley

One fairly common scholarly event in Legal Academia is the colloquium: a seminar in which professors from across the country are invited to a law school to take part in a series of lectures and discussion panels on a given topic. George Mason University held a series of such colloquia in the late 1990's dealing with issues in Contract Law and this hefty collection of essays and discussions is the result. Not only is it an excellent collection of works and position papers on Contracts, it's a fascinating look into the minds of legal scholars across the political spectrum in conversation on a specific topic.

 Calculating Promises: The Emergence of Modern American Contract Doctrine by Roy Kreitner

This book demonstrates the rich potential for scholarly inquiry even in an area traditionally seen as straightforward and staid as Contract Law. Contracts have been understood as "legally enforceable promises," but Kreitner's work attempts to show that the history of Contract was not that simple, and it took until the late 19th Century for judges and scholars to reach clear consensus on what a contract even was. Certainly a thought provoking argument.

 Working With Contracts: What Law School Doesn't Teach You by Charles M. Fox

This book is published by the Practising Law Institute, a major publisher of Continuing Legal Education programs working lawyers need to maintain their licenses. To that end, its focus is well-explained in its title: the goal is to take the abstract knowledge you'll learn in your Contracts courses and turn that into a practical skillset for drafting legally enforceable contracts in real world practice. Even if a student is still several years away from doing so, this kind of practical perspective can go a long way to clarify concepts she may be struggling with in an abstract classroom setting.

 Liberty of Contract by David N. Mayer

Contract law has a particularly significant political element in the history of the United States, owing to a 40-year span of time from 1897 to 1937 commonly referred to as the "Lochner era" when the right of individuals to contract themselves into any number of arrangements without the protection or interference (depending on your perspective) of the government was held sacrosanct by the Supreme Court. This book is an interesting survey into that era, as well as a modernization of the arguments for maximum freedom of contract. This remains an influential, though not controlling, view today.

 A History of the Anglo-American Law of Contract by Kevin M. Teeven

This title goes into the long history of Common Law Contracts, taking the reader back more than a millennium through its developments in the English Chancery Courts. It also serves as a fairly comprehensive history of Anglo-American law generally as Contract arguably forms the basis of law as we know it more than any other specific sub-discipline.

Williston on Contracts by Samuel Williston

One foundational type of law title is the "scholarly treatise": often starting (or rather, having started a century ago or more) as a law school textbook, the authoring professor and his or her colleagues expand the work based on new developments, cases, or areas of law that become relevant, but the entire work is still undergirded by the professor's original theories and explanations, often long after their deaths: Prof. Williston wrote the first edition of this treatise, is long since deceased, and the work is being continued by a team of new editors. However, it still bears his name as branding of a sort, to let readers know the work's approach compared to other scholarly treatises on the subject. In any event, this title is still updated via pocket part. Available on Westlaw Edge.