The Private Law of Emergency traces the development of the American law of contract in response to four emergencies that occurred between 1860-1940 – the Civil War, World War I, the 1918 pandemic, and the Great Depression. It traces the development of an idea – that the purpose of the law of contract is to preserve certain features of civil society and in this way guard against the corrosive effects of emergency on that society.
The thesis explores three broad themes; first, that private law provides a means by which courts have managed the resolution of an emergency; second, that that the way courts have applied private law in response to emergency can tell us something about the true values underlying private law; and third, that the way courts have applied private law in response to emergency tells us something about the public law of emergency – and in particular, the capacity of emergency powers to affect private rights.
The thesis considers these developments in the context of parallel developments in legal method – most particularly, the rise of formalism in private law – in the law of equity, and in the positioning of commerce as central to the maintenance of the legitimacy of the American constitutional system across this period. It demonstrates that these developments have suppressed the early tendency of the common law to operate as a form of emergency law.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:columbia.edu/oai:academiccommons.columbia.edu:10.7916/m4hj-6x07 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Adams, Michael Walter Robert |
| Source Sets | Columbia University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Theses |
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