 One central dialectic within this corpus has the “normative power” tradition of the natural lawyers pitted against the more expectational views of the English common law. As Atiyah notes (1981: ch. 6), there is a tension between the Natural Law promissory theory and the actual law of contract and promise plainly evident in the British common law. One source of the tension is the common law doctrine of “consideration”, which mandates that only promises given with “consideration”, i.e., given in exchange for something of value, are enforceable in the law. In other words, mere promises, given without consideration, are traditionally not indemnified by the law.