(Un)common Sense: Intercultural Responsibility in Contractual Relations within Pluralistic Democracies

This paper challenges the assumption that contract law operates as a neutral framework for determining contractual meaning in a context of cultural diversity, arguing instead that it systematically reflects and reinforces dominant cultural understandings. In pluralistic societies, contract law’s omnipresent (implicit) reliance on an ostensibly shared “common sense” obscures the power-laden processes through which intercultural disputes about contractual meaning are resolved. Drawing on critical insights from legal theories about cultural cognition, political economy, and agonistic democracy, the paper demonstrates how the legal construction of contractual meaning in pluralistic societies often unconsciously, but inevitably, allocates intercultural responsibility in ways that structurally shape broader social power relations between cultural communities. By exposing the normative choices regarding cultural hierarchy embedded in these legal processes, the paper advocates for a more transparent and democratically justified approach to contractual meaning that recognizes the culturally constructed nature of legal cognition and its implications for intercultural justice in a pluralistic society.