[lesterbuck]

>A contract is an agreement between two private individuals. If one of those individuals believes that the terms of the contract are antiquated and thus cannot honestly provide an assurance of honoring them, that person is ethically bound not to execute the contract. All the Latin in the world doesn't get you around that.

That is really a very simplistic view of the real world of real estate. For example, in 1983 when I bought a Houston house, I read every scrap of paper involved in the transaction. (Title company closers call us "readers.") The faded Nth generation copy of the deed restrictions ("an agreement between two private individuals") had horrific language about not allowing those of other than the white race to live in the property (unless in servants quarters). By that time, that language had been neutralized by the Supreme Court, but there was a good period of time where it had legal force but had to be ignored by those of good conscience. George W. Bush got the one news cycle treatment about that as the same language was in the deed restrictions he signed, as well as in many subdivisions from that era. That language carries on in the record forever.

[rayiner]

Lease contracts are contracts but deeds aren't really contracts. Terms of a deed can run with the property in a way that terms of a contract cannot.

[lesterbuck]

A deed isn't a contract, but a deed restriction sure is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deed_restriction

[rayiner]

In American law, a covenant is best thought of as something different than a contract. They are related, but covenants are a property law concept, while contracts are their own area of law. A covenant can run with the land: someone in 1920 can put a restriction in a covenant that the owner of the property in 2014 must abide by, even if the property has changed hands many times in the interim. However, contracts only bind the parties that agree to it.

The distinction between the two is very relevant vis-a-vis your response to 'tptacek. The terms of a lease contract are freely bargained-for between buyer and seller in the present day. Because contracts cannot bind non-parties, they will only contain provisions that at least one party considers meaningful. However, a covenant is not freely bargained-for between buyer and seller in the present day. Both the buyer and seller may be bound by provisions that both believe to be antiquated (like covenants not to sell to particular minority groups).

If you think a contractual term is antiquated, you're free to bargain with the seller to have it eliminated. With a covenant provision, however, both you and the seller might be stuck with what someone wrote-in decades ago.

[tptacek]

I'm not sure what your point is. Sublettor restrictions on leases have been challenged in court, and there are classes of restrictions that have been judged unconscionable; you cannot, for instance, rent out an apartment in Chicago and absolutely forbid sublettors, nor (obviously) can you forbid African American sublettors.

So my point isn't that the black letter language of any contract must in all cases stand up in court. My point is that the restrictions in leases that block Airbnb will stand up, because despite the relative novelty of Airbnb, the lease restrictions they butt up against aren't obscure. They are central to the tensions between renters and landlords and thus well-tested.

Also: if someone puts a contract in front of you that requires you to discriminate against African Americans: no, I don't think you can ethically sign it.

[lesterbuck]

>Also: if someone puts a contract in front of you that requires you to discriminate against African Americans: no, I don't think you can ethically sign it.

Again, you make a simplistic statement that ignores the real world. When social systems are realigning, there is a period when you ignore the plain terms of the contract because you know people aren't enforcing it anymore. Whether that is happening with AirBnB or not is not my point. My point is that it is really easy to make a blanket statement about being ethical in contract law. The chance of that statement actually being the "ethical" choice in all cases is, effectively, zero. The real world is much too complicated to reduce it to the logical exactitude you are claiming.

[tptacek]

When you sign a lease, your landlord expects approval over sublettors. You know they do. They know they do. The contract says they get it. This notion that the Internet is rewriting the ethics of that situation is relativistic bullshit; the argument is embarrassing.

Sorry, but the Internet has not in fact rewritten every rule that is somehow inconvenient to people on the Internet.

[lesterbuck]

Wow, we must be having two different discussions. I don't disagree with your last comment. In fact, not a single word of my comments have anything to do with the internet, and, in addition, my original example predates the web by a good ten years. I only object to your making blanket statements about it being "unethical" to <insert absolute statement>. That is hardly a relativistic bullshit argument. In fact, entire fields of human study are devoted to the intricacies of the edge cases of such "embarrassing arguments." If only ethics could be reduced to predicate calculus.

[aestra]

Illegal contracts are illegal. What's your point? You can't sign away your legal rights.