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The perception of a "contract" is based on the Latin phrase pacta sunt servanda (agreements must be kept). Contracts can be simple everyday buying and selling or compounded multi-party agreements. They can be made orally (e.g. buying a newspaper) or in article (e.g. signing a gentleman%27s agreement of employment). Sometimes formalities, such as writing the arrangement down or having it witnessed, are called for for the deposition to take effect (e.g. when buying a house).

Two of Hart's students have continued the debate Lease Agreements since. Ronald Dworkin was his successor in the Master of Jurisprudence at Oxford and his greatest critic. In his book Law's Empire, Dworkin attacked Hart and the positivists for their refusal to treat law as a moral issue. Dworkin argues that demand is an "interpretive concept", that requires judges to find the best fitting and most just solution to a condign dispute, given their constitutional traditions. Joseph Raz, on the other hand, bankrupt defended the positivist outlook and even criticised Hart's 'soft social thesis' approach in The Command of Law. Raz argues that law is authority, identifiable purely through social sources, without reference to moral reasoning. Any categorisation of rules beyond their role as authoritative dispute mediation is best left to sociology, rather than jurisprudence.