Law Commons^™

One-Legged Contracting, Ian Ayres, Gregory Klass

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This response to Robin Bradley Kar & Margaret Jane Radin, Pseudo-Contract and Shared Meaning Analysis, 132 Harv. L. Rev. 1135 (2019), makes three broad points. It criticizes as arbitrary and essentializing Kar and Radin’s insistence of shared meaning as the core of contracting. It argues that even if shared meaning were the sine qua non of contracting, their proposal fails to achieve it because it does not assure that the terms would be cooperatively communicated. And it argues that their proposed enforcement standard would in practice severely limit freedom of contract and likely reduce consumer welfare. There is a …

Contractual Communication, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this Response, I will investigate the foundations of both shared and unshared meaning in legal communication. Part I takes a step back from contractual communication and offers a preliminary sketch of a general model of legal communication; the sketch draws on speech act theory and the work of Paul Grice, extending and modifying many of the insights developed by Kar and Radin. Part II turns to contractual communication, differentiating distinct “situations of contractual communication” and interrogating Kar and Radin’s Shared Meaning Analysis. Part III interrogates Kar and Radin’s distinction between “contract” and “pseudo-contract.” The conclusion of the Response briefly …

Boilerplate And Party Intent, Gregory Klass

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It is commonly recognized that parties often do not read or understand contract boilerplate they agree to, and that such parties might not intend all the terms in it. Less often noticed are decisions that favor boilerplate over evidence of the parties’ contrary intent for the very reason that it is boilerplate. This article discusses that phenomenon. It identifies decisions in which courts favor boilerplate terms over other evidence the parties’ intent because it is boilerplate, discusses the rules that explain those outcomes, and examines the reasons behind the rules.

A contractual writing, whether individually negotiated and drafted or boilerplate, …