Stewart Macaulay is internationally recognized as a leader of the law-in-action approach to contracts. He pioneered the study of business practices and the work of lawyers related to the questions of contract law.

Yale's Grant Gilmore called him "the Lord High Executioner of the Contract is Dead Movement." Macaulay declined the honor and claimed to have said only that academic contract was dead while the real institution was alive and well. Also, he is one of the founders of the modern law and society movement.

His Mitchell Lecture at the State University of New York at Buffalo paraphrased Gertrude Stein and asked, "Law and the Behavioral Sciences: Is There Any There There?" He cautioned both against dismissing the enterprise and claiming too much.  more . . .