Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-1983
ISSN
0006-8047
Publisher
Boston University School of Law
Language
en-US
Abstract
Why would anyone write about unilateral contracts today? After all, Karl Llewellyn argued convincingly more than forty years ago' that unilateral contracts are rare and unimportant and should be relegated to the "freak tent. ' 2 Academics, he said, created the "Great Dichotomy" between unilateral and bilateral contracts; lack of support for the unilateral contract idea in the cases required those academics to illustrate the concept with ridiculous hypotheticals about climbing greased flagpoles and crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. The drafters of the Second Restatement of Contracts thus considered it a step forward when they not only minimized the importance of the unilateral-bilateral distinction but sought to eliminate the term "unilateral contract" from the lexicon of the law. Today, those commentators who still deem the subject worthy of mention applaud the burial of the unilateral contract.3 Why unearth the decaying corpse?
Recommended Citation
Mark Pettit,
Modern Unilateral Contracts
,
in
63
Boston University Law Review
551
(1983).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/752
