Chapter 54 concerns relational contracts. Classical contract law was implicitly based on a paradigm consisting of a bargain made between strangers transacting on a perfect market, and focused on the static instant of contract formation, rather than dynamic processes such as the evolution of a contractual relationship. Relational-contract theory rejects the stranger-in-a-perfect-market paradigm and the static conception of contract law. Instead, it is based on a paradigm of a contractual transaction between actors who are in an ongoing and dynamic relationship. The identification of relational contracts as an economic and sociological entity is desirable. However, a theory of relational contracts requires the formulation of a body of legal rules applicable to, and only to, relational contracts. This is a place to which relational-contract theory has not gone and cannot go.
Feminist Relational Contract Theory: A New Model for Family Property Agreements
