Last July, Professor Jonathan Lipson and Interim Dean Rachel Rebouché hosted a workshop for contributions to Contract in Crisis, an upcoming special issue of Duke University’s Law and Contemporary Problems. The issue will focus on private ordering concerns raised by the COVID-19 pandemic, with articles contributed by contracts scholars from across the country. The two brief workshop gatherings brought together the nation’s contracts scholars, with nearly twenty contributors and commentators Zooming in to discuss their work and the implications of COVID for contract law and theory.
The workshop abandoned the traditional academic symposium format (panels of paper presentations) for a faster-paced approach. Contributors took turns summing up the key points of their essays in a five-minute “elevator pitch,” followed by a few minutes of prepared feedback from an assigned commentator, and ended with ten minutes of open questions from the group. The structure was focused, efficient, and maintained a lively energy throughout both two-hour gatherings.
Authors discussed a variety of compelling contracting questions raised by the pandemic. Topics included doctrinal solutions to addressing the concurrence of COVID-19 and income inequality, as well as the benefits of using private ordering solutions in times of public crisis in lieu of public regulation. Mechele Dickerson of the University of Texas Law School discussed her work on the phrase “essential worker” and its predominant application to low-income women of color, who are deemed “essential” yet effectively treated as dispensable. Her article will propose guidelines for who should be deemed “essential” in a pandemic context and offer ways in which workers could be more adequately protected and compensated.
Many authors assessed courts’ treatment of contract disputes arising from the pandemic, including the inadequacies of force majeure clauses and claims of impracticability and frustration of purpose in the COVID context. Aditi Bagchi of Fordham University School of Law, for example, focused specifically on the need for courts to assign risk allocation retroactively absent express contractual delegation.
Other authors explored contract law’s imperative to develop new equitable approaches to address the avalanche of claims, including medical, housing, and student debt disputes, that arise in times of extreme upheaval. Martha Ertman of the University of Maryland School of Law detailed how the overlap of the pandemic, economic fallout, racial injustice uprisings, and climate change crises in 2020 indicated the need for contract law to either create or reinvigorate approaches that address distributive consequences for people of color, front line workers, and under- or non-insured people.
“The pandemic tested the resilience of all social institutions,” Professor Lipson observed. “Contract is no exception. This symposium was an opportunity to gather leading scholars (including Temple 10-Q founding editor David Hoffman, now a Professor and the Deputy Dean at Penn Law) to assess the performance of contract in this crisis, in order to understand how it can respond more effectively to the next crisis.”
Co-editor Dean Rebouché noted that the contributions to the symposium shine a light on what contract can and cannot accomplish in crisis: “For as many misgivings authors expressed about how traditional contract doctrines can apply to pandemic-inspired disputes, just as many essays propose novel interventions that envision contract law as an engine for change and social justice.”