In order to assess the defensibility of this claim, I consider whether the “from Status to Contract and back again” thesis has any merit. I therefore, secondly suggest that it is the directional appeal of Maine’s linear or absolutist view that has led modern private law scholars to engage in Mainean “status”-speak. While this argument strikes me as plausible, the conceptual problems that transplanting Maine’s categories into contemporary private law discourse entails call for additional justification. I firstly suggest that scholars mirror Maine’s thesis with their argument that interpersonal rights and obligations frequently result from naturally occurring societal processes that the law normatively reflects conversely, that said rights and obligations are not necessarily the result of private-autonomous agreements between freestanding individuals. For this purpose, I tease out several interesting parallels between status as part of Maine’s theory and “status” as part of modern private law discourse. I dedicate the remainder of the Article to exploring why-in the face of clear countervailing evidence-modern private law scholars continue to engage in Mainean “status”-speak. Drawing on comparative legal history, classical sociological and anthropological literature, contemporary contract law theory, and recent works in the field of (behavioral) law and economics, I discuss the claim that modern private law is witnessing a reverse movement “from Contract to Status.” I show that this claim is historically inaccurate and conceptually simplistic in that it attributes shades of meaning to status that Maine never contemplated.

In this Article, I conduct a long overdue assessment of Henry Maine’s “from Status to Contract” thesis in light of two essentially modern phenomena: contract standardization and relational contracting.

50 shades contract terms pdf