The Insights Driving the Contract Analogy Sample Clauses

The Insights Driving the Contract Analogy. The analogy to contract law is not without appeal. Moral theories of contract center on autonomy, and parentage agreements promote autonomy in reproduction and family formation. One might argue that both promote autonomy in a similar way by holding parties to their shared ex ante choices. A contract manifests the parties’ mutual assent to binding legal duties, and a parentage agreement manifests the prospective parents’ mutual assent to legal parenthood. In a sense, both empower individuals to voluntarily create enforceable legal rights and duties. Indeed, contract is the paradigm of voluntary legal obligations. Other areas of law impose duties on actors for their voluntary conduct. Criminal and tort law impose liability for an agent’s voluntary actions. Yet, contract law’s voluntarism runs deeper. Contracting parties choose their obligations. Professor Xxxxxxx Xxxxx famously described contractual duties as “essentially self-imposed.”113 A promisor had no duty to do anything until he chose to make an offer and the promisee accepted. Similarly, many intended parents have no rights or duties concerning the child until they and their partner assent to share parenthood.114 Like contracts, parentage agreements confer on private individuals the legal power to create the legal rights and duties of parenthood. This recognition is vitally important. Parentage agreement laws give adults the normative power to create legal rights and duties of parenthood through private acts without judicial oversight. The similarity to contracts, however, ends here. The legal powers, their justifications, and their effects are fundamentally different. Crucial differences arise at each moment of contract, whether we consider questions of formation, interpretation, modification, breach, or remedies.