Preface

• Author: J.H. Verkerke
• Pages: xi-xii

xi

Preface

These teaching materials are a work-in-progress. Our reading assignments this

semester will include all of the elements that make up a conventional casebook.

You will read judicial opinions, statutory provisions, academic essays, and

hypotheticals. You will puzzle over common law doctrines and carefully parse

statutes. We will try to develop theories that can predict and justify the patterns of

judicial decisions we observe.

Unlike a conventional casebook, however, I have selected each element of the

readings myself. We will start at the beginning of these materials, read each

assignment in order, and finish at the end. All of the reading assignments are also

self-contained. When I ask you to read a statutory section or a portion of the

Restatement, it will appear in the text at the point where you should read it. In

addition, we will cover the entire set of materials. You will not spend the semester

hauling around hundreds of extra pages that we have no time to read or discuss. At

the end of each section, you will find discussion questions that track very closely

the questions that I will ask during our class time together. Finally, the pages

themselves are formatted to make reading easier and to give you plenty of space to

take notes and mark up the text.

Our class also will use an online collaboration site to enrich and extend class

discussions. This site will provide links to additional legal sources as well as

questions for class discussion, practice problems, explanatory notes, and a

discussion forum. The site will develop and evolve in response to your needs and

interests. If you have any suggestions for changes or additions to these materials, I

invite you to talk with me or post your ideas to our collaboration site.

Why study contract law?

The first semester of law school is mostly about learning to speak a new legal

language (but emphatically not “legalese”), to formulate and evaluate legal

arguments, to become comfortable with the distinctive style of legal analysis. We

could teach these skills using almost any legal topic. But we begin the first-year

curriculum with subjects that pervade the entire field of law. Contract principles

have a long history and they form a significant part of the way that lawyers think

about many legal problems. As you will discover when you study insurance law,

employment law, family law, and dozens of other practice areas, your knowledge of

contract doctrine and theory will be invaluable.