Contract and Power: Ideologies, Inequalities, and Marginalisation in European Contract Law

his introductory chapter frames the volume’s central concern with the relationship between contract law and power. It challenges formalistic accounts of contract by examining how power operates through legal rules, market structures, and social hierarchies. Distinguishing between power “to” and power “over”, the chapter explores empowerment, domination, and inequality across stages of contracting, including negotiation and enforcement. It highlights gendered, racialised, digital, and structural forms of vulnerability, and shows how contract law both reproduces and conceals power asymmetries. The introduction positions the contributions as a critical rethinking of European contract law’s normative foundations.