Public Policy and Good Morals

This chapter addresses the question of whether a society committed in principle to the legal recognition and enforcement of contracts is free, nevertheless—or even required—to withhold recognition and enforceability from certain contracts, by declaring them ‘null’ or ‘void’ under contract law doctrines such as ‘good morals’ or ‘public policy’, because of their unacceptable content, purpose, or consequences. This is the classical question of freedom of contract, which can be rephrased, to a large extent, in contemporary terms of ‘commodification’ and, for the European Union, as the question of the moral limits to the internal market.