Contracts Commons^™

Hidden Contracts, Shmuel I. Becher, Uri Benoliel

BYU Law Review

Transparency is a promising means for enhancing democratic values, countering corruption, and reducing power abuse. Nonetheless, the potential of transparency in the domain of consumer contracts is untapped. This Article suggests utilizing the power of transparency to increase consumer access to justice, better distribute technological gains between businesses and consumers, and deter sellers from breaching their consumer contracts while exploiting consumers’ inferior position.

In doing so, this Article focuses on what we dub “Hidden Contracts.” Part I conceptualizes the idea of hidden contracts. It first defines hidden contracts as consumer form contracts that firms unilaterally modify and subsequently remove from …

Unwrapping Shrinkwraps, Clickwraps, And Browsewraps: How The Law Went Wrong From Horse Traders To The Law Of The Horse, Cheryl B. Preston, Eli W. Mccann

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

This Article starts with the famous "horse trades" (typically between A and B and for 10£) from early discussions of contract law, and proceeds through Judge Burrough's enduring "unruly horse" and Karl Llewellyn's Across Sales on Horseback and The First Struggle to Unhorse Wares, to provide background for a critique of the recent judicial liberality in enforcing online contracts. We then focus on role of Judge Frank Easterbrook, who has personally insulted the place of the horse in law, and his infamous opinion in ProCD v. Zeidenberg. This case fueled the enforcement of clickwrap and browsewrap contracts by decaying assent …