For over a decade, contracts literature has focused on standardization. Scholars asked how terms become standard, and why they change so rarely. This line of inquiry painted a world where a standard term persists until it is dislodged by another standard term, perhaps after a brief window of...

This essay highlights a phenomenon that has no place in the conventional theory of sophisticated business contracts: the term that makes no sense as an enforceable promise, one that defies functional explanation, one that drafters blush to rationalize in retrospect or chalk up to honest mistake....

The willful US fiscal crackup of 2012-13 will impose costs unless politicians' change their behavior and return to practicing good governance. In the past, the United States ran deficits, or put off some harder long-term choices, but basic budgetary processes worked. Everyone worldwide, whether...

The willful US fiscal crackup of 2012-13 will impose costs unless politicians' change their behavior and return to practicing good governance. In the past, the United States ran deficits, or put off some harder long-term choices, but basic budgetary processes worked. Everyone worldwide, whether...

The escalating crisis in Ukraine has prompted the United States and Europe to impose the toughest economic sanctions against Russia since the end of the Cold War. Continued instability and military conflict in eastern Ukraine are straining Ukrainian finances. Despite a generous international...

Italy changed its debt contracts, Belize passed new debt legislation, and Taiwan sued Grenada this year, all in response to a string of court rulings in New York that tried to make Argentina pay its debts from its financial crisis in 2001. The court rulings have gone to unprecedented lengths to...

The Greek debt crisis prompted EU officials to embark on a radical reconstruction of the European sovereign debt markets. Prominently featured in this reconstruction was a set of contract provisions called Collective Action Clauses, or CACs. CACs are supposed to help governments and private...