Hermeneutical Injustice, Contract Law, and Global Value Chains

Global value chains (GVCs) resist dominant contract framing, because presumptions about contract’s bilateral structure and party autonomy fail to capture the complex interconnections between private exchange relations. Contract law seems to obscure, rather than capture, the ways in which the relationships and experiences of various actors in GVCs are linked. This article argues that, in doing so, contract law contributes to systemic hermeneutical injustice. Systemic hermeneutical injustice captures how shared interpretative resources can render those in disadvantaged positions of social power unable to make intelligible that what is in their interest to render intelligible. The article’s primary aim is to show how this form of injustice bears on contract law and how it can function as an independent normative constraint on the institution of contract law.