Benjamin Sturrock (University of Melbourne, Law School; London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) – Department of Law, Students) has posted Contracts as Promises, and the Protection of the Performance Interest on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This paper examines the convention of promise as the moral basis for contract law. If we see contracts as promises, do common law remedies for breach of contract reflect this? Can the common law’s historical preference for damages be justified? My thesis is that breach of contract is ‘wrong’, in the same way that breaking a promise is wrong. For this reason I argue that compensation is not the only permissible remedial rationale, and we need to rethink the availability of the full panoply of remedies.