The Idea of Private Law Author:Ernest J. Weinrib Private law applies to our deepest intuitions about personal responsibility and justice to the property we own and use, to the injuries we inflict or avoid, and to the contracts which me make or break. Rejecting the functionalism popular among legal scholars, Ernest Weinrib advances the provocative idea that private law is an autonomous and noni... more »nstrumental moral practice, with its own structure and rationality. His formalist approach repudiates the identification of law with politics or economics.« less