About the speaker

Tim Bleeker is a climate lawyer and an expert in environmental liability law. He is an assistant professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and coordinator of the LLM programme ‘International Business Law: Climate Change and Corporations’. His research focuses on environmental law, climate change liability, corporate law and public interest litigation . Tim wrote a PhD thesis on directors’ liability for environmental damage. 

Abstract

What is the justification of the law of contracts? What are its moral foundations? Why and how do these questions matter for parties who engage in contracting and for judges deciding their disputes? We lack definite answers to these questions—but not because answers have not been offered. The contemporary philosophy of contract law is, in fact, rich in theories. These theories see contract as a number of things: as promise, as a transfer of ownership, as a matter of consent, as a form of collaboration, as a plan, as a tool for empowerment, as a form of procedural justice, etc. The Institution of Contract offers, instead, a non-reductive theory of contract law—a theory that conceives of contract as a legal institution, without explaining it in terms of different phenomena or thick philosophical commitments—that attempts to integrate the insights of many already existing theories within a unified and attractive account. As a legal institution, the book argues, contract law (i) is constituted by a complex set of rules, principles, and doctrines; (ii) can only be fully understood by adopting an internal perspective; but that also (iii) needs to be morally and politically justified, and (iv) should operate in a way that is consistent with that justification. The book, thus, illuminates the structure of contract law as a legal institution, and builds upon that structure to offer a unified and coherent view of contract law’s normative foundations, its internal structure, and its relationship to broader questions of political morality.

Registration

The lecture will be in REC A3.01 (research seminar room) and online via zoom. To register online, please click on the button below.