A book chapter by Fordham Law Professor Aditi Bagchi—titled “In Search of the Wrongdoer behind Unjust Prices,” forthcoming in 2026—was summarized on Legal Theory Blog.
This chapter argues that a price can be unjust because it is the product of wrongful conduct by one of the parties to the sale, or because it is the product of an unjust market. In both cases, it is sensible to refer to the price itself as unjust not unlike the way we speak of unjust enrichment. But while the legal concept of unjust enrichment tends to refer only to enrichment that is the product of inequity between two parties, unjust prices should be understood to encompass prices that are the result of both bilateral and systemic wrongs. Some unjust prices are the result of either a bilateral or systemic wrong, but not the other. Some prices reflect both kinds of wrong, and the systemic wrong makes the bilateral wrong possible; in these cases, the background injustice is necessary to characterize the private conduct of a contracting party as wrongful. In other cases, market dysfunction, which may or may not be unjust, partially redeems a price that is prima facie unjust. While the morality of private pricing cannot be assessed without reference to the justice of the background market, because the wrongdoing—and the wrongdoers—behind bilateral and systemic wrongs are distinguishable, the wrongs call for different institutional responses within and outside of contract law.
Read “Bagchi on Unjust Price Wrongdoers” on Legal Theory Blog.