Boilerplate: The Fine Print, Vanishing Rights, and the Rule of Law

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Boilerplate--the fine-print terms and conditions that we become subject to when we click "I agree" online, rent an apartment, enter an employment contract, sign up for a cellphone carrier, or buy travel tickets--pervades all aspects of our modern lives. On a daily basis, most of us accept boilerplate provisions without realizing that should a dispu

Reviews

Winner of the 2014 Scribes Book Award, The American Society of Legal Writers "[Radin] has given us a sophisticated and thought-provoking treatment of the boilerplate contracts that everyone signs yet few read or understand."--Robert F. Nagel, Wall Street Journal "Radin makes a compelling case that boilerplate constitutes a clear and present danger to our core values. The practical remedies she suggests ought to command the attention of anyone concerned about the imposition of non-negotiable terms on American consumers."--Glenn C. Altschuler, Huffington Post "Boilerplate is exemplary scholarship: lucid, jargon-free, and focused on solving problems as well as identifying them. It's a model of the 'process,' inside-the-system track for social change."--Michael Stern, American Lawyer "Boilerplate is a book from which all readers could benefit, whether or not they ultimately agree with every one of the author's analyses and conclusions."--Brian H. Bix, Tulsa Law Review "One of the things I like so much about Boilerplate is that it clarifies just how deep and pervasive this problem is for modern contract theory as a whole. By casting doubt on one of the most common starting points in modern contract theory, Radin in effect forces us to reflect on the basic object of the inquiry. She thereby challenges us to produce either better theories or a better world, and to do so based on the facts rather than fanciful pictures of the market."--Robin Bradley Kar Jot, Illinois Public Law and Legal Theory Research Papers Series

Author Bio

Margaret Jane Radin is the Henry King Ransom Professor of Law at the University of Michigan and the William Benjamin Scott and Luna M. Scott Professor of Law, emerita, at Stanford University. Radin is the author of Reinterpreting Property and Contested Commodities.