248
Opinion of O'Connor, J.
what remedy to afford for their breach. The Court fails to recognize that when a State decides to force parties to comply with a contract, it does so only because it is satisfied that state policy, as expressed in its contract law, will be advanced by that decision.
Thus, the Court's allowance that " '[s]ome state-law principles of contract law . . . might well be preempted to the extent they seek to effectuate the State's public policies, rather than the intent of the parties,' " ante, at 233, n. 8 (quoting Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 28), threatens to swallow all of contract law. For example, the Court observes that on remand, the state court will be required to decide whether petitioner reserved the right to alter the terms of its frequent flyer program retroactively, or instead only prospectively. Ante, at 234. The court will presumably decide that question by looking to the usual "rules" of contract interpretation to decide what the contract's language means. If the court finds the language to be ambiguous, it might invoke the familiar rule that the contract should be construed against its drafter, and thus that respondents should receive the benefit of the doubt. See 2 E. Farnsworth, Farnsworth on Contracts § 7.11, pp. 265- 268 (1990) (hereinafter Farnsworth). That rule of contract construction is not essential to a functional contract system. It is a policy choice that our contract system has made. Other such policy choices are that courts should not enforce agreements unsupported by consideration, see 1 Farnsworth § 2.5; but cf. J. Barton, J. Gibbs, V. Li, & J. Merryman, Law in Radically Different Cultures 579 (1983) (other legal systems enforce certain agreements not supported by consideration); that courts should supply "reasonable" terms to fill "gaps" in incomplete contracts, see 2 Farnsworth §§ 7.15-7.17; the method by which courts should decide what terms to supply, see C. Fried, Contract as Promise 60, 69-73 (1981); Charny, Hypothetical Bargains: The Normative Structure of Contract Interpretation, 89 Mich. L. Rev. 1815, 1816, 1820-1823
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