Law, Private Governance and Continuing Relationships
Bibliographic Citation
1985 Wis. L. Rev. 615 (1985)
Abstract
Professor Kidwell, though acknowledging the modest role of contract doctrine in contracting behavior and the powerful contribution of the relational contract paradigm, contends that the transactional contract paradigm remains the primary source of contract doctrine. Professor Kidwell identifies four types of glue-market, moral, social respect, and law-which hold contracting partners together and causes them to perform promises. The law glue, representing a promise-enforcement system, affects contracting behavior only if it contributes to decisionmakers information not found in the systems represented by the other contractual glues. Moreover, Professor Kidwell suggests that the law glue adds more information only if it operates by relatively formal rules. These rules may not model contractual behavior as well as rules generated by the relational paradigm, but they are more functional, easier to administer, and arguably consistent with the real world of long-term contractual relationships.
