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The Social Contract Rediscovered conducts a critical analysis of the historical evolution of legitimacy, tracing its development from natural law to positive law and finally to post-modern critiques. It fills a scholarly gap by addressing the overlooked aspect of the consent process.
List of contents
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
1. Social Contract in Historical Perspective
1.1 The Promise that Binds Us
1.1.1 Promise Anecdotes: To Break or Not to Break?
1.1.2 Consent's Fundamental Significance in Legitimacy
1.2 Consensual Legitimacy's Genealogy and Nature
1.2.1 Organic Consensual Legitimacy's Early History
1.2.2 The Heyday and Multi-Century Modernization Process
1.2.3 The Spontaneous and Organic Consensual Legitimacy Process
1.3 Society as a Grand Social Contract
2. Law as Legitimacy, Methodology, or Ideology
2.1 Introduction: The Epistemology of Legitimacy
2.2 Legitimacy Dialectics and Law as Methodology
2.2.1 Aquinas' Dialectics of Law and the Social Contract of Moral
2.2.2 Developmental Perspective of Law from Dworkin to Hart
2.2.3 Historicity of Law: Developmental Legal Perspective and Beyond
2.3 The Postmodernist Critique on Contractarian Methodology
2.3.1 Deconstruction: The Founding Violence of Law
2.3.2 Post-structuralist Historical Contingency and Power Relations
2.3.3 The Dynamic and Relational Perspective and Beyond
2.4 From Classical, Realistic, to Critical Epistemology of Law
2.4.1 Rawlsian Neo-Contractarian Epistemology of Law
2.4.2 From Realist to Critical Legal Epistemology of Tragedy
2.5 The Epistemology of Consensual Legitimacy
3. Individuals and Comparative Contract Law Legitimacy
3.1 Individual Consensual Freedom in Private Law
3.2 Contract Justice and Performance Certainty
3.2.1 The Defense of Uncertainty Doctrine in Civil Law
3.2.2 The Anticipatory Breach Doctrine in Common Law
3.2.3 Social Justice vs Liberal Justice of Contract
3.3 Certainty, Freedom of Contract, and Individual Rights
3.3.1 Free Will, Freedom of Contract, and Consensualism
3.3.2 Freedom of Contract and Contract Certainty
3.3.3 Private Property, Contract, and Individual Freedom
3.4 Social-Liberal Contract Justice Ontological Integrity
4. Individuals and National Development Consensus Legitimacy
4.1 Washington vs Beijing Consensus and Development Legitimacy
4.2 FDI for National Development through
Discursive Adaptation 4.2.1 The Power and Success of an Open Market
4.2.2 Market-oriented Local
Discursive Decentralization 4.2.3 Continuous Decentralization through
Discursive Adaptation 4.3 Social Contract and Contrasting Development Consensus
4.3.1 The Washington vs Beijing Consensus: The Fall and the Rise
4.3.2 Development Consensus' Law and Development Critique
4.3.3 Beijing Consensus: The Consensual Process Legitimacy
4.4 The Dialectic of National Development Legitimacy
5. Individuals and Global Exchange Mechanism Legitimacy
5.1 Global Marketplace from the GATT to the WTO
5.2 Consensual Legitimacy: States, Market, and Individuals
5.2.1 WTO and State Primacy in International Law
5.2.2 The Sanctity of WTO Obligations
5.2.3 WTO's "Indirect Impact on Individuals"
5.3 WTO as an International Social Contract on Trade
5.3.1 WTO as a Constitutionalized Global Modern Exchange Regime
5.3.2 International Social Contract and WTO Constitutionalism
5.3.3 WTO Onto-Epistemology's Law and Development Critique
5.4 Global Marketplace's Onto-Epistemological Legitimacy
6. Consensual Legitimacy's Onto-Epistemological Integrity
6.1 Consensual Legitimacy Beyond Agreed and Discussed
6.2 Consensual Legitimacy Modernization Paradox
6.2.1 Consensual Legitimacy's Self-sufficient Epistemological Paradox
6.2.2 The Self-sufficient Author Function's Ontological Paradox
6.2.3 Modernity's Onto-Epistemological Origin-returning Assimilation
6.3 Consensual Legitimacy's Onto-Epistemological Integrity
Index
About the author
Wenwei Guan is Associate Professor of Law at City University of Hong Kong.
