In the articles by Professors Juliet Kostritskyl and Omri BenShahar2 on which I have been privileged to be asked to comment, the resources of sophisticated law and economics as applied to "relational contracts" are used to suggest reforms to the law of contractual agreement. These reforms are intended to make that law of greater use to competent commercial parties who deliberately draft incomplete agreements. Kostritsky and Ben-Shahar tell us that under the current law, such agreements may fall foul of being struck out for indefiniteness, or of being effectively supplanted by judicial gap filling that does not capture the intentions of the parties. Kostritsky and BenShahar have differing opinions about what should be done about this, but, whilst I shall describe their interesting suggestions, I shall not address this Comment to the detail of those suggestions. It is on the background conception of the role of law in supporting commercial parties' contracts which they share that I will principally ccmment. For I believe this conception is unsatisfactory, but in an interesting way tells us a great deal about the current use of law and economics in contract scholarship and about the current state of relational contract theory.
