Introduction to Havighurst's Limitations Upon Freedom of Contract

Abstract

If I follow Dean Havighurst's argument correctly, the idea-or slogan- of freedom of contract is one that emerges in the course of the nineteenth century after centuries or millennia during which the range of choice available to most people had been confined within what we, in this century, would perceive as intolerably narrow limits. It seems to be implicit in his discussion that this new idea, freedom of contract, derived from the eighteenth century industrial revolution and the economic system which, following Karl Marx, we call capitalism that followed in its wake.