Question

Read the following passage carefully.

In late nineteenth-century American jurisprudence, the dominant paradigm of contract law was the "will theory," which posited that contractual obligations arose solely from the subjective convergence of the parties' intentions—a "meeting of the minds." Proponents of this theory, largely aligned with classical liberal economic thought, argued that the state's role was merely to enforce the private law created by autonomous individuals. However, as the industrial economy grew increasingly complex, characterized by standardized mass-production and impersonal corporate transactions, the subjective will theory proved inadequate. It was exceedingly difficult to ascertain subjective intent in standard-form contracts or in exchanges where parties never communicated directly.

Consequently, legal scholars and judges gradually embraced the "reliance theory" (or objective theory) of contract. Under this framework, liability was not predicated on a subjective meeting of minds, but rather on the objective manifestations of intent and the justifiable reliance of one party on the promises or conduct of another. If a party's outward behavior induced reasonable expectations in a counterparty who then acted to their detriment, an enforceable obligation existed, regardless of the first party's hidden reservations.

While early twentieth-century Legal Realists championed the reliance theory as a necessary adaptation to economic realities—framing it as a mechanism to socialize risk and enforce commercial fairness—some modern legal historians caution against viewing this shift as a clean rupture. These historians note that even during the zenith of the will theory, courts frequently employed equitable doctrines, such as promissory estoppel, to protect relying parties in cases of apparent injustice, effectively bypassing the strict requirements of subjective intent. Thus, the formal transition to the reliance theory may be better understood not as the sudden discovery of a new equitable principle, but as the doctrinal systematization of ad hoc equitable remedies that had long coexisted uneasily alongside classical contract law.

The passage provides the most support for which one of the following statements regarding the courts that operated during the "zenith of the will theory"?