SEASON 1

Coming to Terms with Consumer Contracts

Consumer contracts are everywhere. The number of contracts you enter into today may surprise you. Most of the contracts you enter into no longer involve a pen and paper. Purchasing a morning coffee, visiting a website, or scheduling a delivery are just a few daily transactions that more often than not include contract terms.

In this episode, consumer contract experts Omri Ben-Shahar and Florencia Marotta-Wurgler discuss several types of consumer contracts, enforceability of terms, and the potential consequences of agreeing to these terms without reading the fine print.

SUPPLEMENTARY RESOURCES

More Than You Wanted to Know: The Failure of Mandated Disclosure by Omri Ben-Shahar and Carl E. Schneider

Perhaps no kind of regulation is more common or less useful than mandated disclosure―requiring one party to a transaction to give the other information. It is the iTunes terms you assent to, the doctor's consent form you sign, the pile of papers you get with your mortgage. Reading the terms, the form, and the papers is supposed to equip you to choose your purchase, your treatment, and your loan well. More Than You Wanted to Know surveys the evidence and finds that mandated disclosure rarely works. But how could it? Who reads these disclosures? Who understands them? Who uses them to make better choices?

 

Omri Ben-Shahar Scholarly Articles

Contracting Over Privacy: Introduction

Ben-Shahar, Omri and Strahilevitz, Lior, Contracting Over Privacy: Introduction (January 2017). Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 43, No. S2, 2016; University of Chicago Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper No. 792.

Data Pollution

Ben-Shahar, Omri, Data Pollution (June 1, 2017). University of Chicago Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper No. 854; U of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 679.

Personalizing Mandatory Rules in Contract Law

Ben-Shahar, Omri and Porat, Ariel, Personalizing Mandatory Rules in Contract Law (May 23, 2018). University of Chicago Law Review, Forthcoming; University of Chicago Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper No. 855; U of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 680.

 

Florencia Marotta-Wurgler Scholarly Articles

Some Realities of Online Contracting

Marotta-Wurgler, Florencia, Some Realities of Online Contracting (January 1, 2011). Supreme Court Economic Review, Vol. 19, No. 1, 2011.

Self-Regulation and Competition in Privacy Policies

Marotta-Wurgler, Florencia, Self-Regulation and Competition in Privacy Policies (June 2016). Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 45, No. 2, 2016; NYU Law and Economics Research Paper No. 17-10.

The Hollowed Out Common Law