In "The Correspondence of Contract and Promise," I claim that contract scholars have mistakenly presumed that they can assess the correspondence between contract and promise without first providing a theory of self-imposed moral responsibility that explains and justifies the promise principle. To illustrate the dependence of correspondence accounts of contract law on a theory of self-imposed moral responsibility, I demonstrate how a "personal sovereignty" account of individual autonomy explains how and why, contrary to existing correspondence theories, promissory responsibility corresponds to the rights and duties recognized by contract.  Personal sovereignty recognizes the fundamental right of individuals not only to choose their system of ends but also to choose how to pursue those ends.  According to this account of promising, individuals have the normative power to undertake self-imposed moral responsibilities (i.e., moral obligations) because such a power enhances personal sovereignty.  Although I find this an intuitive understanding of the logic of moral justification, some philosophers have doubted that morality can simply "give moral effect" to attempts to create moral responsibility.  In Part I of this companion piece, I explain the skeptical argument that has been leveled against theories of promissory obligation that posit a normative power to make a promise.  In Part II, I argue that it has no force against the personal sovereignty account I offer.

In Rethinking Free Speech and Civil Liability, Daniel Solove and Neil Richards attempt something truly ambitious.  The authors seek to map coherent boundaries for the First Amendment's vast civil domain.  Their project merits serious attention.  Currently, different rules apply to civil liability for speech depending on whether the liability arises in tort, contract, or property.  Solove and Richards claim that these boundaries are unworkable, under-theorized, and in some cases destined to collide.  They develop a framework for mapping the First Amendment's civil domain that is based upon a distinction regarding the type of power the state exercises in various civil liability contexts.  This response critically examines the choice and meaning of power, and the boundaries that a power-defining approach would draw.