The Foie Gras Wars

Nate Oman from Concurring Opinions writes about the assumptions we have about contract law and the free market:

Generally speaking debates in contract law get played out according to a well-worn ideological script. On one side are the heartless conservatives who think that a contract is a contract is a contract and that folks ought to be able to deal or not deal on whatever terms they wish and that the law should confine itself to enforcing the deal as written. On the other side are the bleeding-heart liberals who insist that the vision of the marketplace as an arena of free choice and personal autonomy is an illusion and that a host of supposedly "voluntary" associations are shot through with coercion that the law ought to be policing. Or at least that is the way that the discussion tends to play out in a first year contracts class.

But exceptions are always good for shaking up people's assumptions, and Sonoma Foie Gras v. Whole Foods is just such an example. Discussion here.