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Full-Text Articles in Law
What Do Consumers Understand About Predispute Arbitration Agreements? An Empirical Investigation, Roseanna Sommers
What Do Consumers Understand About Predispute Arbitration Agreements? An Empirical Investigation, Roseanna Sommers
Articles
The results of a survey of 1,071 adults in the United States reveal that most consumers do not pay attention to, let alone understand, arbitration clauses in their everyday lives. The vast majority of survey respondents (over 97%) report having opened an account with a company that requires disputes to be submitted to binding arbitration (e.g., Netflix, Hulu, Cash App, a phone or cable company), yet most are unaware that they have, in fact, agreed to mandatory arbitration (also known as “forced arbitration”). Indeed, over 99% of respondents who think they have never entered into an arbitration agreement likely have …
Contract Schemas, Roseanna Sommers
Contract Schemas, Roseanna Sommers
Articles
This review draws on the notion of “contract schemas” to characterize what ordinary people think is happening when they enter into contractual arrangements. It proposes that contracts are schematically represented as written documents filled with impenetrable text containing hidden strings, which are routinely signed without comprehension. This cognitive template, activated whenever people encounter objects with these characteristic features, confers certain default assumptions, associations, and expectancies. A review of the literature suggests that contract schemas supply (a) the assumption that terms will be enforced as written, (b) the feeling that one is obligated to perform, and (c) the sense that one …
Commonsense Consent, Roseanna Sommers
Commonsense Consent, Roseanna Sommers
Articles
Consent is a bedrock principle in democratic society and a primary means through which our law expresses its commitment to individual liberty. While there seems to be broad consensus that consent is important, little is known about what people think consent is. This Article undertakes an empirical investigation of people’s ordinary intuitions about when consent has been granted. Using techniques from moral psychology and experimental philosophy, it advances the core claim that most laypeople think consent is compatible with fraud, contradicting prevailing normative theories of consent. This empirical phenomenon is observed across over two dozen scenariosspanning numerous contexts in which …
After Autonomy, Carl E. Schneider
After Autonomy, Carl E. Schneider
Articles
Bioethicists today are like Bolsheviks on the death of Lenin. They have, rather to their surprise, won the day. Their principle of autonomy is dogma. Their era of charismatic leadership is over. Their work of Weberian rationalization, of institutionalizing principle and party, has begun. The liturgy is reverently recited, but the vitality of Lenin's "What Is To Be Done?" has yielded to the vacuity of Stalin's "The Foundations of Leninism." Effort once lavished on expounding ideology is now devoted to establishing associations, organizing degree programs, installing bioethicist commissars in every hospital, and staffing IRB soviets. Not-so-secret police prowl the libraries …