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Speaker Series: Jed Lewinsohn (NYU), “It’s Nothing Personal: Transferable Rights and the Distinctiveness of Commercial Relationships”
February 6, 2015 @ 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Jed Lewinsohn will present a talk as part of our Speaker Series, on Friday, February 6 from 3:00 – 5:00 p.m., in Caldwell 213. A reception will follow.
“It’s Nothing Personal: Transferable Rights and the Distinctiveness of Commercial Relationships”
Abstract:
The transferability of promissory rights is at once a basic feature of the modern economy and practically nonexistent in noncommercial contexts. One question raised by the transferability of promissory rights is conceptual: what conception of promissory rights and obligations do we presuppose when we speak of rights that can survive a substitution of parties? Another question is normative: What can be said in favor of allowing this practice within, but restricting it to, the commercial domain? I will make progress on both of these questions by distinguishing between “relational” and “objectual” conceptions of promissory rights, by situating the phenomenon of rights-transfer in relation to debates about the conventional status of promissory norms, and by considering values specific to different relationship-types that bear on the fungibility of the individuals within them.
