Addressing contemporary challenges in contract law through millenary concepts

This chapter addresses contemporary problems in contract law through a (very) classic authority, namely Aristotle, and more generally the millenary concept of justice/fairness as understood by that philosopher. The first part of the chapter discusses Aristotelian epieikeia (roughly ‘equity’), which may constitute a general and very robust ‘solution’ even to some problems of the contemporary law of obligations. In addition, several contemporary philosophers, such as Perelman and Dworkin, still investigate the concept of equity and fair judgment as well as the connection between judiciary activity’s characteristics and the concept of law itself. The second part of the chapter zooms in on some practical challenges of the contemporary law of obligations. The contemporary problems that might be tackled with the concept of fairness and which form the object of our chapter are that of contract definition, formation, and execution in so-called smart contracts. We show that these challenges are not new in their nature, and that the lessons drawn from the first part of the chapter can be successfully applied to at least some of them.