COLLECTIVE ACTION AND CONTRACT RIGHTS

The possibility of collective action is essential to human freedom; yet, as Rousseau famously argued, individuals acting together allow themselves to depend on one another's choices and thereby jeopardize one another's freedom. These two facts jointly constitute what I call the normative problem of collective action. I argue that solving this problem is harder than it looks: it cannot be done merely in terms of moral obligations; indeed, it ultimately requires putting in place a full-fledged system of contract rights. The point has important ramifications for contract theory: the role that contract rights play in reconciling collective action and freedom turns out to be crucial to understanding how-and by whom-these rights can legitimately be enforced. It also explains why expectation damages should be the standard remedy for breach of contract.