The offer-and-acceptance analysis has long been questioned as not (easily) applicable to certain methods of contracting. This paper looks at this analysis through the prism of normative powers and identifies much deeper problems with the analytic explanation of how such unilateral normative powers as offer and acceptance can generate such a normative result as concluding a contract. It argues that even if the powers to offer and accept are exercised, as they are in certain methods of contracting, these are not the normative powers that create contractual obligations; such obligations are always created by the jointly exercised power to contract. The paper substantiates an account of the power to contract as a sui generis normative power and explains the role the unilateral powers to offer and to accept play when they are exercised, while also explaining why there is no need to ‘invent’ offering and accepting where there are none.

While numerous contemporary studies, in both social psychology and sociology of the law, have addressed legal socialization and legal consciousness on the part of individuals, little work has been done on the complex social construction of the need and demand for legal services. This is by no means a rhetorical question; it involves a number of competing definitions of the relationship between the legal profession and the public, and thus justifies the legal services currently offered. The author shows that policies relating to access to the law and the justice system in France today seek to focus on the user, which means that users must be able to characterize their situation in legal terms and apply to the courts. The process of raising individuals' consciousness of the law is examined against the backdrop of increasing liberalization of social policies.