Annual Distinguished Lecture with Stewart Macaulay

10/01/2009

Stewart Macaulay, who is Malcolm Pitman Sharp Hilldale Professor Emeritus at the

University of Wisconsin-Madison, will present the Annual Distinguished Lecture at the BYU Law School on Thursday, October 1, at 3 p.m. in Room 206.

His lecture is entitled: A Contract Crisis?  “It Ain’t Necessarily So.”

Professor Macaulay is an internationally recognized scholar and a leader of the law-in-action approach to contracts.  He pioneered the study of business practices and legal work regarding contract law.  He is also one of the founders of the law and society movement.  He has served as President of the Law and Society Association, and he received the association’s Harry Kalven Prize.  He also received the Outstanding Scholar Award from the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation.  He was a member of the Board of Advisors to the Reporter for the Restatement (Second) Contracts, and he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Following is an abstract of his upcoming lecture:

A Contract Crisis?  “It Ain’t Necessarily So.”

There are several proposals for a new contract law.  On one hand, our economic crisis suggests that many see the need to rewrite or rescind contracts to reflect the drastically changed conditions of the past few years.   On the other hand, there are proposals for a far more formal law of contracts than are found in the Uniform Commercial Code and the Restatement (2d) Contracts.  Drawing on calls for “a new legal realism,” Professor Macaulay suggests that there is much that we don’t know about the need for and the consequences of such major revisions.  He stresses, however, that a key word in Ira Gershwin’s lyrics from “Porgy and Bess” is “necessarily.”  The first step must be a better picture of contract law in action.  Such a picture might support some but not other changes.

Posted: September 24, 2009