 A question facing the social solidarity view is why market participants should feel obliged to comply with customary norms. Custom is sometimes portrayed “as the embodiment of what parties in the relevant community actually, not fictitiously, consent to when they manifest their intention to be legally bound” (Barnett 1992: 1192).   On this view, the parties’ expectations become the grounds for complying with the relevant surplus sharing norms, although expectations, even ones based on longstanding customs, are not always reasonable or fair. Another possibility is that the reasons for compliance may be grounded in general, consequentialist considerations concerning the importance of reinforcing socially beneficial customs. A third is that compliance produces additional surplus by lowering transaction costs.  In the final analysis, a broad range of distributive considerations arguably ought to shape bargaining behavior, and the above discussion is not intended to be exhaustive. As should be apparent from the lack of convergence among theorists, the moral question of justice in transfer that is at the heart of contract remains far from settled. 