Religion, Story and the Law of Contracts: Reply to Professor Berman

• Published in: The Journal of law and religion 1986, Vol.4 (1), p.125-132
• Main Author: McThenia, Andrew W.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Christianity; Colloquium on Law and Religion in the First Year Curriculum a Loyola Law School Colloquium; Communities; Contract law; Contracts; Judaism; Neighborhoods; Promises; Religious laws; Resurrection; Spiritual love
• ISSN: 0748-0814; 2163-3088
• DOI: 10.2307/1051222

Contract law, pronounced dead within the last decade, has undergone a Lazarus-like resurrection. The revival of scholarship runs the gamut from Professor Charles Fried's writing asserting promise as “the moral basis of contract law,” through the Second Restatement of Contracts which concedes the legitimacy of more communal based doctrines such as promissory estoppel, to the writings of Professor Ian MacNeil who argues that community is “the fundamental root, the base” of contract and the even more collectivist writings of scholars in the Conference on Critical Legal Studies. This revival of contract scholarship does not yet suggest any unifying theme, but it does, I think, indicate a vigorous search for some means of weaving together seemingly intractable concepts. This symposium on Law and Religion suggests an important area of search. That is, it invites us to examine the shared ethos of our culture. I agree with Professor Berman's observation made elsewhere that law and religion are “two different but interrelated aspects … of social experience” and that one cannot flourish without the other. Because both law and religion are aspects of our social experience, one's view of God and the world must certainly affect one's view of the law. Similarly, one's view of the law probably affects how that person views God.