Power, Inequality and the Bargain : The Role of Bargaining Power in the Law of Contract - Symposium Introduction

In the Spring of 2006, I was privileged to host and moderate symposium presentations by an extraordinarily talented group of scholars who gathered at Michigan State University College of Law to analyze and discuss the role and relevancy of the legal concept of bargaining power in twenty-first century contract law. Just as dramatic social, political, and economic changes at the turn of the twentieth century drove the development of legal conceptions of bargaining power disparities and introduced those conceptions as explicit elements of many contract doctrines, the turn of the twenty-first century may prove similarly transformative. This symposium issue includes contributions by W. David Slawson, Larry A. DiMatteo, Blake D. Morant, Rachel Arnow-Richman, Curtis Bridgeman, and James F. Hogg that explore the appropriate role of bargaining power as a legal concept in the now-mature information era, with each participant developing their own unique perspective on how and whether such issues impact the regulation of contract