The parties to a valid contract are bound to do what they have promised. So, to be consistent, the Doctrine of Proper Law examines the parties' intention as to which law is to govern the contract. The claimed advantage of this approach is that it satisfies more abstract considerations of justice if the parties are bound by the law they have chosen. But it raises the question of whether the test is to be subjective, i.e. the law actually intended by the parties, or objective, i.e. the law will impute the intention which reasonable men in their position would probably have had. It cannot safely be assumed that the parties did actually consider which of the several possible laws might be applied when they were negotiating the contract. Hence, although the courts would prefer the subjective approach because this gives effect the parties' own wishes, the objective test has gained in importance. So the "proper law" test today is three-stage: