Contracts is the least political course in the first year of law school, perhaps all of law school.  I say keep it that way, and share that with students, despite how visionaries on the far left and far right may wish otherwise.   I also think the course and its content should be made as clear and straightforward as possible for the students, not bogging down in every exception within the exception.  

I agree that tailoring the contracts course to suit is no harder than any other professional task lawyers appointed to the job have handled. Start with getting samples of syllabi from senior colleagues, at your own school or from around the internet. Most books are packed with a combination of cases, notes, problems, drafting excecises, and so on.  There are separate dedicated books chock full of drafting problems. 

Review all these.  Evaluate them with your specific situation in mind: your strengths and weaknesses as a teacher, your student's backgrounds and prospects, your school's needs and expectations for you given its standing and curriculum. 

Rank them from best to worst and, then, as Ohio State's Doug Whaley once quipped, assign the second-best one and keep the best one for yourself. Assign small bits at a time and discuss everything that is assigned.

Concerning eschewing the political, each chapter in my book, Contracts in the Real World, ends with a short synthesis contending how contract doctrine occupies what I call the "sensible center" in law. Following is that from Chapter 2, entitled "Facing Limits: Unenforceable Bargains."

As a matter of policy to promote freedom of contract, courts usually enforce contracts as written, without specific review of the terms. If terms show a contract was formed, courts enforce them. Fairness is not a court’s concern in contract cases. Some deals, however, are struck on surprisingly lopsided terms, like a simultaneous exchange of different amounts of money or as the product of extortionate threats.

Courts struggle with whether to enforce bargains that appear in unconventional settings, such as parenting, or romance, where bargains are unlikely; or involve activities that are illegal, like gambling or prostitution, or unsavory, like adultery. Deals suggesting lack of true bargain or verging on illegality provoke judicial attention—and are often ruled unenforceable, sometimes by declaring they lack consideration.

Visionaries on the left and right alike object to this balanced approach. Devotees of a greater formalism rebuke any judicial second-guessing of the bargains people make. It should be irrelevant whether a trade is made of different amounts of money or for nominal consideration like $1. People should be free to strike bargains on any subjects they wish with equal dignity—whether deals about paternity, parenting, palimony, adultery or gambling.

Promoters of a greater contextualism would give judges broader license to police not only bargains signaled to be suspect by the form or amount of consideration but a wider range of terms deemed objectionable. That could include authorizing a more probing evaluation, on the grounds of public policy, of contracts not only that may be the product of extortion but about babies, among paramours or between adulterers or sisters playing slots.

These stances are problematic in opposite ways. Greater formalism has the virtue of promoting freedom of contract and increasing the security of exchanges. But expand that freedom infinitely and lose any space for social control. It is difficult to deny that there is at least some utility in some avenues of social control—almost certainly for anti-extortion laws but probably for the regulation of other activities strongly affecting the public interest.

In contrast, excessive zeal for social control constricts a desirable space for freedom of contract. By inviting judicial second-guessing of all bargains, such zealotry would destroy certainty about the security of exchanges. Reasonable people may differ about where to draw the line between freedom of contract and social control.

Contract law’s exact division may not always be clear and can be contested on any given issue. But it seems pragmatic and prudent to enable a wide scope for freedom of contract accompanied by a modicum of oversight to thwart extremes and police gray areas. That, in any event, is the best description of prevailing contract law. And these are not the only tools available to mediate between the extremes. Just because people make a valid contract does not mean it must be performed come hell or high water, as the next chapter shows.

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