Diversity Readings Related to First-Year Courses

Wayne Barnes, Consumer Assent to Standard Form Contracts and the Voting Analogy, 112 W. Va. L. Rev. 839 (2010), HeinOnline.

Sarah Swan, A New Tortious Intereference with Contractual Relations: Gender and Erotic Triangles in Lumley v. Gye, 35 Harv. J.L. & Gender 167 (2012), HeinOnline.

From the Introduction:

Ultimately, it is hoped that this Article reinforces the potential for feminist scholarship to enrich our general understanding of private law and clarify areas of doctrinal confusion. Focusing a feminist light on interference with contractual relations allows us to see how a tort that appears facially neutral is actually premised upon deep gender biases. Applying a feminist perspective also leads to re-envisioning the tort in a way that addresses these problems and offers a cohesive and coherent version of interference with contractual relations.

P. 170

Charles E. Aster & Michael A. Attaway, Syndicated Construction Loans, Defaulting Lenders, and Equitable Remedies, 48 Tex. Tech L. Rev. 853 (2016), HeinOnline.

From the Introduction:

The Article explores the problem of defaulting lenders in syndicated construction loans; the evolution of the courts moving from at-law, monetary damages to the equitable remedies of injunctive relief and specific performance; how syndicate construction loan documents need to change; how this is beneficial to not only the borrowers but also, surprisingly, the lenders; and a suggested provision to include in the current market lender-drafted loan documents to increase a borrower's ability to obtain equitable remedies instead of limiting them to monetary damages.

P. 855

Henry E. Smith, The Equitable Dimension of Contract, 45 Suffolk U. L. Rev. 897 (2012), HeinOnline.

Lea S. VanderVelde, The Gendered Origins of the Lumley Doctrine: Binding Men's Consciences and Women's Fidelity, 101 Yale L.J. 775 (1992), HeinOnline, reprinted in Contracts Stories 229 (Douglas G. Baird ed., 2007), Reference Area (KF801.A2 C66 2007).

In the familiar case of Lumley v. Wagner, the English Court of Equity held that although opera singer Johanna Wagner could not be ordered to perform her contract, she would be enjoined from singing at any competing music hall for the term of the contract. Lumley is usually lauded in first year contracts courses as a just and fair decision, one that illustrates the proper distinction between equitable orders that force performance (unworkable and unjust) and equitable orders that prevent performance (sometimes workable, usually practical, and not necessarily unjust). Contracts classes, however, rarely consider the central labor issue: whether an injunction preventing an employee from quitting and working elsewhere violates the American tradition of free labor and the right to quit employment. . . . In this Article, I offer a tentative explanation of this phenomenon: that the Lumley rule's reception in the United States was facilitated by the fact that the majority of cases that employers won were cases involving women.

P. 775, 777 in the journal printing