Contracts, an Electronic Text

Contracts: Cases, Text, and Problems is an electronic casebook available in PDF format. The 2013 edition is updated to July 2013.

Created initially for a four-unit Contracts course at ASU, Professor Calleros designed Contracts: Cases, Text, and Problems as an "open-source" textbook. Other professors of contract law are invited to become "co-authors" by tailoring the book to their own courses. As an open-source book, professors can add, delete, or replace material as dictated by their own teaching styles and points of emphasis. Contracts offers professors a unique and innovative way to teach students in an up-to-date way, with easily customized material, and without being forced to buy multiple books and supplements.

Most topics in the book present material in the fashion in which new associates typically address an assignment in a law office: they (1) consult a secondary source or an expert within the firm for general background information and to identify issues and authority {the book provides treatise-style background information on most topics before diving into the main cases}, (2) associates then study specific decisions on point in the relevant jurisdiction {the book presents plenty of case law, as is customary with any "casebook"}, and (3) they apply their newly synthesized knowledge of the law to the facts of a new dispute or other problem presented to them {the book provides many more exercises and practice exams than the standard casebook, including a fair number of drafting exercises}. The book thus includes the written equivalent of a combination of introductory lecture, case method, and problem method.

To combat the high cost of casebooks, the 509-page book is available at a very modest price for permanent download of any of the electronic formats. Each purchaser is permitted to download the purchased file on any computer or electronic device used exclusively by that purchaser. Purchasers agree not to transfer files to others or to allow others to use their files.

The book analyzes selected provisions of the Restatement (Second) of Contracts but does not reproduce it in its entirety, to avoid advancing the common student practice of treating the Restatement like a collection of statutes. It reproduces most of articles 1 and 2 of the UCC as enacted in Arizona, to better illustrate the nature of the UCC as a uniform code that is adopted and codified by individual state legislatures.