Consideration as Contract: A Secular Natural Law of Contracts

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I. INTRODUCTION

The need to protect reasonable reliance is chanted like a mantra amongst many contract law theorists. Unfortunately, many of these theorists do not distinguish between protecting reliance based on one's own established property rights or protecting reliance based on a "reasonable expectation" of receiving benefits from others. They do not even appear to recognize the distinction. Nevertheless, on a closer analysis, the distinction is as plain as the difference between self-reliance and reliance upon others.

Freedom of contract is founded on self-reliance and a "decentralized, individualistic economic and political order."1 To the extent that contract law …