 Contract law egalitarianism at the institutional level confronts two standard criticisms. First, it is not obvious that judges have the authority or competence to promote distributive justice. A tax-and-benefit scheme may be a more effective means of promoting the interests of the economically worse off than private law, though whether this is true remains an open empirical question (Kaplow &amp; Shavell 1994; Lucy 2007: 352–6; Liscow 2021 [Other Internet Resources]). Second, contract disputes are private affairs, and people deserve protection from being singled out to bear the burdens associated with the collective’s moral responsibilities. Thomas Nagel (1991: ch9) describes a division of moral labor between, on the one hand, institutional actors responsible for the basic legal structure, and, on the other, ordinary citizens acting in their private capacity. In general, persons may lead better lives if freed from the obligation to manage their exchange relations altruistically. The point seems consistent, however, with courts being obliged to enforce negative duties—for instance, a duty not to take advantage of the collective’s failure to secure distributive justice (Murphy 1998: 266; Bagchi 2014). The common law’s unconscionability doctrine appears tailor-made to police this kind of predation by the economically privileged of the disadvantaged.