Race and Contracts
Document Type
Book
Publication Date
2024
Abstract
This chapter considers how social identities—including those based on race, gender, and sex--affect contract law, and vice versa. It explains how traditional contract law is a social construct that in turn helps construct racialized and gendered capitalism. Yet, certain equitable doctrines in contract law provide opportunities to think about how and why this is so, and how contracts and race and/or gender intersect. The chapter then discusses three cases about three equitable contract doctrines—undue influence, misrepresentation, and unconscionability—to illustrate how this point. It then offers an example of how contract doctrine might be used to achieve more just results in a way that accounts not only for the parties’ individual transactional conduct, but also for more structural forms of discrimination.
Recommended Citation
Emily Houh, Race and Contracts, in The Oxford Handbook of Race and Law in the United States (Devon Carbado et al. eds. 2022)
Comments
Full-text of this publication is not available in the Repository due to copyright restrictions.