"Have you ever found any logical reason why mutual promises are sufficient consideration for one another (like the two lean horses of a Calcutta hack who can only just stand together)? I have not"
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Pollock isn’t really asking a question; he’s staging a small courtroom comedy to expose a doctrinal awkwardness. Contract law’s neat slogan that a promise can be “consideration” for a return promise is, on paper, elegantly symmetrical. In practice, Pollock suggests, it can feel like propping up a shaky deal with another equally shaky deal. The image of “two lean horses of a Calcutta hack” does the heavy lifting: the bargain survives not because either side has real substance, but because each depends on the other’s frailty to remain upright. It’s witty, but it’s also a warning about legal formalism.
The specific intent is to press on a fault line in nineteenth-century contract theory, when judges and scholars were trying to rationalize why some agreements become enforceable obligations while others remain mere moral undertakings. Mutual promises look “logical” as consideration because they mimic exchange. Pollock’s aside - “I have not” - punctures that comforting logic, implying the rule is less a philosophical truth than a pragmatic convention courts tolerate to keep commerce running.
Subtext: the law often launders policy into the language of logic. Calling mutual promises sufficient consideration isn’t a discovered principle; it’s an administrative decision about when to let parties bind themselves. Pollock’s colonial street detail isn’t neutral either. It signals a world of improvised systems and strained infrastructure - a fitting backdrop for a doctrine that, to him, works more by necessity than by coherence.
The specific intent is to press on a fault line in nineteenth-century contract theory, when judges and scholars were trying to rationalize why some agreements become enforceable obligations while others remain mere moral undertakings. Mutual promises look “logical” as consideration because they mimic exchange. Pollock’s aside - “I have not” - punctures that comforting logic, implying the rule is less a philosophical truth than a pragmatic convention courts tolerate to keep commerce running.
Subtext: the law often launders policy into the language of logic. Calling mutual promises sufficient consideration isn’t a discovered principle; it’s an administrative decision about when to let parties bind themselves. Pollock’s colonial street detail isn’t neutral either. It signals a world of improvised systems and strained infrastructure - a fitting backdrop for a doctrine that, to him, works more by necessity than by coherence.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
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