 There is room to question whether the law (especially in a liberal state) should be in the business of enforcing moral duties associated with promising. The economic approach to contract law de-emphasizes contract’s promissory roots and instead locates the law’s justification in general welfare: the rules of contract law enable socially productive reliance on promises and mutually beneficial exchange. This approach is more prominent among academic lawyers than among philosophers, and is widely regarded, at least in the United States, as the leading interdisciplinary approach to contract law.