In the past, legal scholars have analogized the contract to a product, a social artifact, and a form of technology. In this Article, we suggest that contracts may also be usefully analogized to swag. The term “swag” refers to branded merchandise that is given away for free to people who...

How are the practice and business of law likely to be impacted by the rise of “legaltech”—the wide array of emerging technologies and innovative processes that are aimed at improving the delivery of legal services? This chapter focuses on one particular type of legal practice, the...

The bilateral treaty of friendship, commerce and navigation was for centuries a staple of international diplomacy. These treaties were famous for addressing a wide range of issues — including human rights, trade and investment protection — in a single document. In recent years, however,...

In their wide-ranging and thought-provoking article, A Market for Sovereign Control, Joseph Blocher and Mitu Gulati argue that territorial sovereignty is a commodity that can and should be subject to market forces. In this Response, I first identify the two different types of deals — friendly...

In much of the legal literature, the fact that the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) has been ratified by so many nations constitutes incontrovertible evidence of its success. This narrative fails to account, however, for the fact that private...

In an earlier era, treaties of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation (FCNs) were the primary international law mechanism through which the U.S. government sought to promote and protect foreign investment. Conventional wisdom holds that FCNs are of only limited historical interest, having been...

Disputes relating to contract interpretation are frequently conceptualized as one-and-done affairs. The court will adopt what it considers to be a reasonable interpretation of the contract, rule in favor of one of the parties, and decide the case. Neither the judge nor the litigants tend to...