The Vital Few: The Entrepreneur and American Economic Progress (Galaxy Book)

Book Description

The Vital Few, a study of the contribution of entrepreneurs to the American economy, provides portraits of the men and women whose individual enterprise has helped to establish the character of the American businessperson and to carry our economy forward from colonial times. Examining such legendary figures as William Penn, Eli Whitney, Henry Ford, and J. Pierpont Morgan in their social and economic environment, Jonathan Hughes illuminates each period of American economic history and provides insights into the workings of American business and the special qualities required of its super-achievers. Taking into account such dramatic changes in the economy as the explosive growth of government and the puzzling effects of "stagflation," Hughes has now expanded his original volume. The new edition includes two additional biographies and a short essay on the nature of bureaucracy in both the government and the private sector. Both biographies are of "bureaucratic entrepreneurs", whose work in the federal government represents the two most prominent trends in government economics. Mary Switzer's 48-year career demonstrates the ways in which the modern welfare state has developed. First a catalyst then a major force in establishing social programs and institutions, she is in large part responsible for the existence of the American welfare state. Marriner Eccles's career, on the other hand, shows the evolution of "compensatory" fiscal and monetary policies from the New Deal to the Korean War. A self-made millionaire who was appointed to a high-level job in the federal government, Eccles quit his post after 1950, convinced that American economic policy was hopelessly inflationary and economically destructive. With these new additions, The Vital Few, long a source of inspiration and economic interest, is more accessible and useful than ever.

Customer Reviews:

History isn't shaped by abstract forces but by individuals........1999-10-21

This book examines the role of prominent Americans in economic development. Hughes divides American economic history into the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries and selects 2 individuals from each era who had shaped their respective eras. For each character study, Hughes describes his or her achievements and how society adjusted to them. This book, written to fill a gap in the field of economics that too often stresses the importance of impersonal factors, is an inspiration to prospective entrepreneurs.

The Vital Few: The Entrepreneur and American Economic Progress (Galaxy Book)

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The Vital Few: The Entrepreneur and American Economic Progress (Galaxy Book)
Jonathan Hughes
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OKG2BW

Book Description

This book displays the underlying structure of a complex body of law and integrates that structure with moral principles.

Charles Fried grounds the basic legal institution of contract in the morality of promise, under which individuals incur obligations freely by invoking each other's trust. Contract law and the promise principle are contrasted to the socially imposed obligations of compensation, restitution, and sharing, which determine the other basic institutions of private law, and which come into control where the parties have not succeeded in invoking the promise principle--as in the case of mistake or impossibility. Professor Fried illustrates his argument with a wide range of concrete examples; and opposing views of contract law are discussed in detail, particularly in connection with the doctrines of good faith, duress, and unconscionability.

For law students and legal scholars, Contract as Promise offers a coherent survey of an important legal concept. For philosophers and social scientists, the book is a unique demonstration of the practical and detailed entailments of moral theory.

Customer Reviews:

The moral foundations of contract law.......2001-05-16

In this excellent treatise, Harvard Law professor Charles Fried argues that the law of contract is founded on a few simple moral principles governing the practice of promise-making and promise-keeping. Dealing by turns with the formation of contracts, the importance of "consideration," the appropriateness of damages in case of breach, the problems of e.g. duress and unconscionability (and the special difficulties they pose for his account), and a variety of other topics that will be familiar to legal scholars and law students alike, Fried briefly, economically, and effectively rationalizes contract law on this unabashedly moral foundation.

In this he is going against the tide and harking back to the "classical" understanding of contract law. But he is not uncritical of that tradition and is quite willing to lambaste it when necessary -- as with, for example, the traditional unwillingness to award damages for certain cases of fraud on the misguided argument that no contract had actually been formed in such cases. (On this point he holds -- in my view quite rightly -- that traditional thinkers were "supremely guilty" of a tremendous nonsequitur.)

On the contrary, he is keenly aware both that contract law is a bulwark of liberty in allowing us to order our own affairs, _and_ that contractual obligations are not the only obligations there are -- indeed that contractual obligation itself cannot get off the ground unless we have a prior, unchosen moral obligation to abide by our promises. In this respect he is a breath of fresh air compared with certain pseudo-libertarian writers and pop-culture icons who reduce all moral obligations to those voluntarily assumed by contract (and I am thinking here specifically of Ayn Rand, among others). Fried is both a true philosopher and a genuine liberal in the classical sense of the term.

I concur with the other reviewer's recommendation of this eminently readable little book to One-Ls. Fried is in general very powerful on the importance of philosophy to law, and here he is at his strongest in arguing for the importance of moral philosophy to contract law.

I also recommend it to the libertarian and classical-liberal readership as a fine example of real philosophy of law.

Should be Required Reading for First Year Law Students.......2001-02-09

Professor Fried (former U.S. Solicitor General) is quite possibly the most erudite professor at Harvard Law School. His precision and exacting analysis shine through in his treatment of what some see as a dying academic field, the Law of Contracts. His perspective on the "classic" cases and extensive treatment of the major doctrinal elements of contract is absolutely refreshing and surprisingly controversial. Controversial because he dares to state, contra critical and deconstructionist theory, that the law does and should contain an overtly moral component.

In short, he argues that private contracts derive their legal force from essentially, what our parents taught us as children. That is, that it is morally wrong to break one's word and worse yet, to lie. If you are looking for a break from the typical law school fare or are just curious about what a different perspective looks like, you cannot go wrong with Professor Fried.

Recommend for Law Students;* Mary Ann Glendon - Rights Talk * C.S. Lewis - The Abolition of Man * Peter Kreeft - The Unaborted Socrates (for a wonderful example of the Socratic Method)

Calculating Promises: The Emergence of Modern American Contract Doctrine

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Calculating Promises: The Emergence of Modern American Contract Doctrine
Roy Kreitner
Manufacturer: Stanford University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contracts | Business | Law | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0804753989
Release Date: 2006-12-08

Book Description

This book is a history of American contract law around the turn of the twentieth century. It meticulously details shifts in our conception of contract by juxtaposing scholarly accounts of contract with case law, and shows how the cases exhibit conflicts for which scholarship offers just one of many possible answers.

Breaking with conventional wisdom, the author argues that our current understanding of contract is not the outgrowth of gradual refinements of a centuries-old idea. Rather, contract as we now know it was shaped by a revolution in private law undertaken toward the end of the nineteenth century, when legal scholars established calculating promisors as the centerpiece of their notion of contract.

The author maintains that the revolution in contract thinking is best understood in a frame of reference wider than the rules governing the formation and enforcement of contracts. That frame of reference is a cultural negotiation over the nature of the individual subject and the role of the individual in a society undergoing transformation. Areas of central concern include the enforceability of promises to make gifts; the relationship of contracts to speculation and gambling; and the problem of incomplete contracts.

From Promise To Contract: Towards A Liberal Theory Of Contract

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From Promise To Contract: Towards A Liberal Theory Of Contract
Dori Kimel
Manufacturer: Hart Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1841134945

Book Description

Liberal theory of contract is traditionally associated with the view according to which contract law can be explained simply as a mechanism for the enforcement of promises. The book bucks this trend by offering a theory of contract law based on a careful philosophical investigation of not only the similarities, but also the much-overlooked differences between contract and promise.

Insincere Promises: The Law of Misrepresented Intent

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Insincere Promises: The Law of Misrepresented Intent
Ian Ayres , and Gregory Klass
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0300106750

Book Description

How can a promise be a lie? Answer: when the promisor never intended to perform the promise. Such incidences of promissory fraud are frequently litigated because they can result in punitive damages awards. And an insincere promisor can even be held criminally liable. Yet courts have provided little guidance about what the scope of liability should be or what proof should be required. This book—the first ever devoted to the analysis of promissory fraud—answers these questions. Filled with examples of insincere promising from the case law as well as from literature and popular culture, the book is an indispensable guide for those who practice or teach contract law.

The authors explore what promises say from the perspectives of philosophy, economics, and the law. They identify four chief mistakes that courts make in promissory fraud cases. And they offer a theory for how courts and practitioners should handle promissory fraud cases.

AMERICAN LITERARY REALISM AND THE FAILED PROMISE OF CONTRACT

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AMERICAN LITERARY REALISM AND THE FAILED PROMISE OF CONTRACT
BROOK THOMAS
Manufacturer: California
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000M2O3RC

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More New Historicism

American Literary Realism and the Failed Promise of Contract
Brook Thomas
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0520206479

Book Description

In law, the late nineteenth century is often called the Age of Contract; in literature, the Age of Realism. Brook Thomas's new book brings contract and realism together to offer groundbreaking insights into both while exploring the social and cultural crises that accompanied America's transition from industrial capitalism to the corporate capitalism of the twentieth century.
Thomas argues that, radically conceived, contract promised to generate an equitable social order--one organized around interpersonal exchange rather than conformity to a transcendental standard. But as the idea of contract took center stage in American culture after the Civil War, the law failed to deliver on this promise, instead legitimating hierarchies of race, class, and gender. Moving expertly from legal analysis to social history, to profoundly recontextualized literary critique, Thomas shows how writers like Twain, James, Howells, and Chopin took up contract as a model, formally and thematically, evoking its possibilities and dramatizing its failures.
Thomas investigates a host of issues at the forefront of public debate in the nineteenth century: race and the meaning of equality, miscegenation, marriage, labor unrest, economic transformation, and changes in notions of human agency and subjectivity. Cross-examining a wide range of key literary and legal texts, he rethinks the ways they relate to each other and to their social milieu.
As recent political rhetoric demonstrates, the promise of contract is still very much alive. American Literary Realism and the Failed Promise of Contract challenges conventional critical wisdom and makes a broad, provocative, and nuanced contribution to legal and literary studies, as well as to intellectual and social history. It promises to revise and enrich our understanding of American culture, law, and letters.

Customer Reviews:

More New Historicism.......1999-01-06

If one is interested in the latest nonsense from the academy, this time dressed up in New Historicist colors, buy this book. If one is interested in either American literary realism or contract law, however, one is better off actually reading those texts and trying to understand them.

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Sad Story

And They Built a Crooked House
Ruth S. Martin
Manufacturer: Lakeside Press (OH)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1879653028

Customer Reviews:

Sad Story.......2006-11-10

Every construction project has its unique problems. The Martins story involves contract breach in terms of quality construction, not discovered until after they had the deed to their home. The responsibility for the defects, because of the contract, was divided between the developer, architect and builder, a somewhat unique situation.

The book might be more useful if it had an index. I was interested enough to order two books recommended in the Bibliography - Appendix C. This is not a bibliography in the true sense of the word, but a suggested reading lists. (Bibliographies normally cite references used in the document.)

In terms of how useful the book is for our litigation, I would have to say - none. The best feature is how it explains that the Owners will be the loser to some degree, no matter how good their case, if it goes to Court. The Defendants are going to lie and distort the issues.

THe author encourages arbitration as a form of resolution.

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Law students and political theorists should read this

Binding Promises
W. David Slawson
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

American contract law no longer possesses any of the prominent characteristics of its classical period. For instance, courts now refuse to enforce standard contracts according to their terms; they implement the consumer's reasonable expectations instead. Businesses can no longer count on making the contracts they want: laws for certain industries or for businesses generally set many business obligations regardless of what the contracts say. A person who knowingly breaches a contract and then tries to avoid liability is subject to heavy penalties.

As Slawson demonstrates, judges accomplished all these reforms, although with some help from scholars. Legislation contributed very little despite its presence in massive amounts and despite the efforts of modern institutions of law reform such as the Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. Slawson argues persuasively that this comparison demonstrates the superiority of judge-made law to legislation for reforming private law of any kind.

Download Description

During its classical period, American contract law had three prominent characteristics: nearly unlimited freedom to choose the contents of a contract, a clear separation from the law of tort (the law of civil wrongs), and the power to make contracts without regard to the other party's ability to understand them. Combining incisive historical analysis with a keen sense of judicial politics, W. David Slawson shows how judges brought the classical period to an end about 1960 with a period of reform that continues to this day. American contract law no longer possesses any of the prominent characteristics of its classical period. For instance, courts now refuse to enforce standard contracts according to their terms; they implement the consumer's reasonable expectations instead. Businesses can no longer count on making the contracts they want: laws for certain industries or for businesses generally set many business obligations regardless of what the contracts say. A person who knowingly breaches a contract and then tries to avoid liability is subject to heavy penalties. As Slawson demonstrates, judges accomplished all these reforms, although with some help from scholars. Legislation contributed very little despite its presence in massive amounts and despite the efforts of modern institutions of law reform such as the Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. Slawson argues persuasively that this comparison demonstrates the superiority of judge-made law to legislation for reforming private law of any kind.

Customer Reviews:

Law students and political theorists should read this.......2001-05-15

Ironically, two of the very best books on law I've read so far in the year 2001 have been written by people whose political outlooks are in many ways opposite to my own. This is one of them. (The other is Deborah Rhode's brilliant _In The Interests of Justice_.)

W. David Slawson has the distinction of having written (twenty years ago) what may be one of the worst books on the dangers of inflation ever committed to print. He has also been, to my own mind at least, consistently on the wrong side of the Microsoft case. But it doesn't matter what other disagreements I may have with him; this is a great book.

In contrast to the more-or-less classical "four corners" approach to contracts, Slawson's essential thesis is that the terms of a contract just _are_ the reasonable expectations of its parties. In this work he traces the growth and influence of this view (and nearby views) through the modern (roughly post-1960) reformation of contract law at the hands of common-law judges.

It's very well done. As the reader might expect, there's quite a bit of material on the development of the Uniform Commercial Code and the intentions of the late great Karl Llewellyn; there's also some trenchant criticism of the UCC, which in Slawson's view tends to hamper the developmental process of common law. Then, too, there's some terrific exposition of the modern tendency to fudge the line between contract and tort law and indeed to assimilate portions of contract law to the law of (what Slawson calls) "relational torts."

Much of the exposition rests on Slawson's understanding of "bargaining power" -- i.e., the power to set the terms of a contract. This power, on his view, has basically nothing to do with "market power" and everything to do with knowledge: in the modern economy, product manufacturers are in a much, much better position both to determine the terms of consumer contracts via the use of standard forms and to have precise, detailed knowledge of the risks associated with their products. As a result, though Slawson does not quite put the matter this way, the traditional common law that was (and is) appropriate for dealings between merchants is not appropriate for dealings between merchants and consumers.

Here I heartily concur -- especially as Slawson is careful to rely on common law rather than positive legislation as the foundation for reform and indeed to argue that regulatory standards aren't very effective in this regard anyway. (Slawson even dedicates the volume to the common-law judge.) And this is one area in which legal thinkers of all political stripes should be able to meet and agree: Slawson's view of contracts is eminently sensible and even common-sensical, as (he points out several times) his own students uniformly recognize when they are introduced to it. Moreover, "judicial activism" in courts at common law just isn't the danger to liberty that it is among Supreme Court justices and federal judges.

Book Description

When does the law permit you to change your mind and reverse a decision you have made? In this masterful book, a foremost authority on American contract law identifies and discusses the general principles and legal rules that bear on this question. E. Allan Farnsworth also offers suggestions to improve the laws that pertain to regretted decisions.

Customer Reviews:

Law students, buy this.......2001-03-21

E. Allan Farnsworth, Reporter for the Restatement (Second) of Contracts and the author of a three-volume treatise on contracts (the student edition of which is also _very_ highly recommended), here tries to make sense of the legal principles that govern whether or not you can change your mind.

Of course most of the work has to do with contract law, but Farnsworth spreads outward into other fields as needed -- into tort law, for example, to discuss whether you can "change your mind" once you have decided to come to the aid of someone whose life is in danger.

The organization is straightforward. Farnsworth begins by examining why our promises, etc., should be binding in the first place and devotes roughly the first half of the book to discussing the various reasons why we might _want_ to bind our future decisions. Then he devotes the second half to expounding the principles that determine whether or not we _are_ thus bound. (The classification scheme here is his own; it heavily overlaps but is not simply identical with the set of principles you learned, or will learn, in your contracts class. He also discusses the points at which current law does not seem subject to such rationalization and makes some suggestions for improvement.)

The exposition is clear and crisp, the writing is free of legalese, and many of the cases will be familiar from contract and tort casebooks. This book therefore makes a fine companion to first-year law hornbooks.

Grab the student edition of Farnsworth's contracts book while you're at it. I use Calamari first to get essential principles, then turn to Farnsworth for elaboration.

Commercial Contracts: A Practical Guide to Deals, Contracts, Agreements and Promises

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Commercial Contracts: A Practical Guide to Deals, Contracts, Agreements and Promises
C. P. Thorpe
Manufacturer: Woodhead Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1855732505

Product Description

This book aims to explain the principles of contract law for the businessman, and to put those principles into their commercial context. Anyone involved in commercial transactions needs at least a basic understanding of the principles of contract law.

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