Macneil, Macaulay, and the Discovery of Power and Solidarity in Contract Law

Abstract

Professor Gordon's Comment focuses on the substantial departures of Stewart Macaulay and Ian Macneil from the conventions of traditional contracts scholarship. He argues that the Macaulay-Macneil perspectives, different though they are, have challenged mainstream scholars in three ways: (I) in emphasizing continuing relations within a community rather than discrete transactions between autonomous individuals; (2) in recognizing the pervasiveness of coercion and dependence in nominally free marketplace relationships; and (3) in demonstrating the practical marginality of the legal rules comprising the core of most conventional scholarship. Professor Gordon concludes by outlining the dramatic changes that would be required in mainstream scholarship were the insights of Macaulay and Macneil to be taken seriously.