Courts and Contracts — What makes a stranger safe to deal with

Trade between strangers works because somebody else will enforce the deal. That is what a court mostly is: not a place of punishment, but the backstop that makes a contract worth signing. Almost no contract ever reaches a judge. They work because everybody knows one is available if it comes to that.

• Judges are not calculators. They interpret, and interpretation is shaped by precedent, by doctrine, and by human judgement about what the consequences will be.
• A right is only as real as your ability to claim it. Free legal representation exists because a right nobody can afford to use is not really a right.