What is your opinion? Did Quentin buy himself a horse? Yes or no, and explain.

Contracts are a strange area of law, very different than some other areas. I mean, we have law all over the place. So there's an area of tort law, which you'll read a little bit about in this course. And in tort law, we have rights and we have duties. I could be walking along the street, and I smash into somebody, and knock them down. I have violated a duty that I owed to that other person. That duty is imposed involuntarily. It's imposed by our relationship on that sidewalk. It's imposed by the law.

But in contract law, the duties that are taken on are taken on voluntarily. And therefore, volition is the cornerstone of contract law. Let me explain. The idea here is, is that in choosing to make a contract, the party is acquiring certain benefits-- call them rights-- in exchange for taking on certain duties. And in fact, every contract involves a party making a decision that they're getting the benefit of the bargain. That they're making a deal that is going to provide to them more benefits than the cost of the duties that they have to take on. So it's a voluntary decision. Volition is at the very cornerstone.

Now it would be wonderful if the two parties are going to make an agreement-- and this chapter really, as you know, is all about the agreement. It would be wonderful if the parties could have a kind of meeting of the minds, where their minds could sort of come together. Now unfortunately, I'm not aware, here on Earth, that that procedure actually exists. Now we do know-- and I hope you guys are aware of Star Trek, because in Star Trek, we had Spock. And Spock, remember, he's the guy with the pointy ears.

Spock was from Vulcan. And he had this amazing ability to sort of take his hands and lay them on to another party, onto their head, and the two brains would actually come together. Now that is a meeting of the minds. In my practice of law for over 40 years, I think we could have avoided lots and lots of problems if we literally could-- had minds come together. Sometimes we say, we could get on the same page. But this is even better. So a meeting of the minds would be a wonderful thing to have. But as you know, it doesn't exist. So we are left with something significantly less productive than that.