15 June 2026 (Monday), 1:00-2:00 PM
Room 723, 7/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong
Liberal theories on the left and the right have encountered difficulties in providing a functioning theory of contract law. Liberal thinkers are committed to finding solutions within the liberal traditions even when liberalism itself might be the cause of problem. The libertarian account places a singular value in the maximization of liberty, which fails to account for the doctrines of contract law. Egalitarian liberals attempt to achieve equality and substantive justice by correcting background injustice, distributive injustice and relational injustice. In doing so, they leave contract law in an untenable position. Contract law would become arbitrary, individuated, paternalistic and contradict liberal values. Contract theory should not be entangled with liberalism. I defend an apolitical theory of contract law: contract as voluntary commutative justice. This theory explains much of the contemporary contract law across jurisdictions. The core principle is simply that a party who has been compensated to assume a risk should not be allowed to renege when the risk materializes. Liberal or not, one should agree with this principle.
Speaker
Hao Jiang is an assistant professor of comparative private law at Bocconi’s Department of Legal Studies. Previously, he taught law at Tulane, Paris II and City University of Hong Kong. He is also a fellow at Yale Law School’s Center of Private Law and visited leading law schools in Asia, America and Europe including HKU. Jiang is a scholar of contract theory and comparative private law. He has written about private and corporate law topics in American, Chinese and European law. He is the author of Cambridge’s Introduction to the Comparative Study of Private Law and the editor of The Making of Chinese Civil Code. His newest edited book, In Defense of Contract Law, a Battle of Theories is soon to be published by Hart. His writings have appeared in journals such as American Journal of Jurisprudence, European Review of Private Law, Michigan State Law Review, Tulane Law Review and the Italian Law Journal etc. He argues that contract law should be free from a commitment to liberalism. The apolitical theory that he develops aspires to explain contract laws from jurisdictions with different political commitments.
Moderator: Peter Chau, Associate Professor, The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law
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