The Article sketches a liberal contract theory which rests on party autonomy and needs no external values. Under a liberal will theory, a contract between two devout distributivists deserves different treatment than a contract between two devout libertarians. Will theory treats divergent intentions, or conflicting social practices, as conventional contract law fact- sensitively treats mistake in the formation of contracts.

Difficult questions about what parties to contracts intended and have assented to, strongly resemble difficult questions about what the law is. Jurisprudence about the latter encounters difficulty explaining the meaningfulness of calling law what judges end up doing in controversial cases. If judges might have gone either way in controversial cases, then they create law after the fact of the decision and no meaningful rights precede the decision.

In the humbler context of contracts, the same problem arises. If the case might go either way, how parties might have any rights before the case comes to decision is perplexing. This Article places special concern on what meaningful notion of assent or consent, the idea of agreement, can exist in the law of contracts. When do parties agree? How do they agree? The probity of imposing any such rules under a naive or imperial idea of legal intent derives from nonliberal values. Under liberalism, social practice sufficiently explains contractual intent as belonging to the will of the parties, not the law.