Critically examines moral-promissory, economic and socio-legal perspectives on contract law, arguing that it should be formal and minimalistic by design.
Jonathan Morgan was educated at Christ College, Brecon, R.M.A. Sandhurst, and Aberystwyth, Cardiff and Glamorgan Universities. He also taught at U.W.I.C. (now Cardiff Metropolitan) for nine years. Jonathan's father the Rev. G Rex Morgan, Chaplain to the King's Royal Rifle Corps and Senior Housemaster at Christ College, Brecon, was a well-known prisoner-of-war and was on the dreadful 'Shoe Leather Express' March in Poland. It is interesting that Christ College former pupils won 23 MCs in the First World War.
Jonathan's was a great Welsh sporting family which included Guy Morgan, Captain of Cambridge University and Wales at rugby and Glamorgan at Cricket, and Dr. Teddy Morgan, Captain of Wales and the British Lions at rugby. Rex's cousin Guy (not the rugby player), was a Royal Navy Lieutenant and prisoner-of-war who wrote the well-known play 'Albert R.N.'. Jonathan's mother, Glenys, was the daughter of Captain T.L.Morgan, Adjutant of the 15th Welsh in the early part of the Great War.
As well as a sportsman himself, Jonathan is a 3rd Order Anglican Franciscan. He was invalided out of the Army with PTSD or related illness in 1980 and had served with the Royal Regiment of Wales as a Captain which included an horrific tour of Northern Ireland in the Ardoyne and Bone district of Belfast.
Part I. Clearing the Ground: 1. Does instrumentalism 'fit' contract law?; 2. Justifying the instrumental approach; Part II. Social Sciences and the Law of Contract: 3. A critique of neoclassical law and economics; 4. Relational contracting: trust, business and law; 5. Extra-legal norms: the irrelevance of the law (of contract)?; Part III. Contract Law Minimalism: 6. Defining contract law minimalism, or the 'new formalism'; 7. Against regulation through contract law; 8. The limited capacity of contract law; 9. What business wants: evidence from the 'markets for law'; 10. A formalist restatement of commercial contract law.