Form Contract

Author(s):  
Tal Kastner

In light of the tendency to view contract through a lens of free will and agreement, this chapter approaches contract from the vantage point of standard form agreements. Drawing on empirical studies, behavioral psychology, law and economics contract scholarship, critical legal studies, legal history, and literary theory, it counters the prevailing view of standard terms as the exceptional case of contract. Through the lens of deconstruction, the chapter highlights the contextual contingency of standard form and refracts the presumptions in society and law concerning the allocation of resources. It identifies how the contemporary proliferation and routine enforcement of ancillary terms such as arbitration provisions in the current day epitomize how contract serves as a tool to leverage power. Examining form-contract scholarship and case law, the chapter reveals the expressive possibility of standard form in American law. It shows how the phenomenon of boilerplate exemplifies the process by which contract language serves to manifest agreement, shaping an understanding of freedom. The chapter extends the insights of legal history concerning the limits of contract freedom in the nineteenth century. In doing so, it draws on American literature to illustrate a changing paradigm of freedom—from wage labor to real estate development to consumption—and the attendant allocation of resources that shape voluntary exchange. By virtue of boilerplate’s contextual contingency, this deconstructive perspective reveals the potential to redistribute resources through standard form contract, and thereby not only create value but shape social norms.

Author(s):  
Eyal Zamir ◽  
Doron Teichman

In the past few decades, economic analysis of law has been challenged by a growing body of experimental and empirical studies that attest to prevalent and systematic deviations from the assumptions of economic rationality. While the findings on bounded rationality and heuristics and biases were initially perceived as antithetical to standard economic and legal-economic analysis, over time they have been largely integrated into mainstream economic analysis, including economic analysis of law. Moreover, the impact of behavioral insights has long since transcended purely economic analysis of law: in recent years, the behavioral movement has become one of the most influential developments in legal scholarship in general. Behavioral Law and Economics offers a state-of-the-art overview of the field. The book surveys the entire body of psychological research underpinning behavioral analysis of law, and critically evaluates the core methodological questions of this area of research. The book then discusses the fundamental normative questions stemming from the psychological findings on bounded rationality, and explores their implications for establishing the aims of legislation, and the means of attaining them. This is followed by a systematic and critical examination of the contributions of behavioral studies to all major fields of law—property, contracts, consumer protection, torts, corporate, securities regulation, antitrust, administrative, constitutional, international, criminal, and evidence law—as well as to the behavior of key players in the legal arena: litigants and judicial decision-makers.


2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 467-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Powell

The tradition of Kemalist secularism (laiklik) in Turkey is often cited to distinguish Turkey as an exceptional case among predominantly Muslim countries. While it is true that the Turkish Constitution, laws, and legal opinions approach the relationship between the state and religion very differently than those of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or even Indonesia, it would be wrong to underestimate the role that religion plays in the formation of Turkish legal norms, including citizen understanding of those norms. There is a wealth of literature describing the nature of Turkish secularism and its evolution. A number of both quantitative and qualitative studies inquire about the preference forShari'aamong Turkish voters. The typical question asks whether respondents favor the establishment of aShari'astate. Over the past fifteen years, these surveys have received response rates ranging between five and twenty-five percent in favor of such a state. However, these results are extremely problematic, because they do not provide any context or meaning for “the establishment of aShari'astate,” either for those who favor it or for those who oppose it. This study begins to unpack the range of possible meanings attributed toShari'awithin Turkey, both among voters and among intellectuals, as a framework for future empirical studies and as a basis for deeper understandings of the role of Islam within Turkish law and politics.


2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Παύλος Βασιλόπουλος

This dissertation is concerned with the concept of political sophistication, referring to the extent and organization of a person’s stored political cognition (Luskin 1987).Available empirical evidence on the levels of political sophistication in mass publics comes almost exclusively from the United States and point to two broad conclusions: First, systematic empirical research has demonstrated that political information in the mass public is particularly low (Converse 1964, Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996). Citizens lack basic knowledge over political affairs. Time and again empirical studies have systematically showed that citizens in the United States and elsewhere fall short of passing even the most rudimentary political knowledge tests. This finding that was first illustrated by the Michigan school in the early 1960s (Campbell et al. 1960) resulted in a wide pessimism over the meaning of public opinion and even of representative democracy (Inglehart 1985).The second broad conclusion is that the politically sophisticated and unsophisticated differ: Political sophisticates have the cognitive capacity to translate their deeper held political values and predispositions into consistent political attitudes (Zaller 1992). They are able to use their political knowledge in order to make informed vote choices in the sense that they accurately adjust their political positions to the parties’ platforms (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996, Lau and Redlawsk 1997, 2006). What is more, they are more likely to participate in elections and other political activities and are less susceptible to political propaganda (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996).However the idea that political sophistication matters for the quality of the public’s political decision-making has met strong theoretical and methodological criticism by the ‘low information rationality’ perspective (Popkin 1991, Lupia 1994,Graber 2001). This group of theories argues that politically inattentive citizens can form their political judgment on the basis of heuristics that allow them to make reasonable choices reflecting their predispositions and interests even though they lack political knowledge.The principal aims of this thesis are: a)to compare different measurement perspectives on political sophistication and assess their methodological potential especially in regard with comparative research on political knowledgeb)to explore the extent to which the pattern of ignorance that has been repeatedly highlighted in the American literature is an internal characteristic of political behavior stemming from the low expected utility of acquiring political information or it is subject to particular cultural and systemic characteristics. To this direction I use Greece as a case study by undertaking an analytical survey of political sophistication, one of the very few that have been conducted across the Atlantic.c)The third aim is to investigate the determinants of political sophistication and especially the potential of the mass media in political learning and in the context of the Greek political and media system.d)d) Finally this thesis addresses the unresolved question concerning the differences in quality of political decisions between the political sophisticated and unsophisticated layers of the public by evaluating the explanatory potential of two competing theories (political sophistication v. low information rationality) in the multi-party political environment of Greece


2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justyna Góral ◽  
Włodzimierz Rembisz

The optimal allocation of resources in various sectors results in the sustainable development of the whole economy (the theory of optimum allocation of resources by Kantonowicz and Koopmans). According to Tinbergen’s studies, the excessive labour force in one of them gives rise to all types of social and economic problems. The objective of theoretical considerations and empirical studies of this publication is to analyse the ratio of the remuneration for labour to its productivity in various economy sectors with particular attention paid to the agricultural sector. The authors also refer to the theory by Lewis and Schultz, who had analysed the problems of agriculture in developing countries, as well as to the Solow economic growth model with the Cobb–Douglas production function. In the light of the empirical data presented in the paper, we can conclude that in section A of Statistical Classification of Economic Activities this ratio is seriously disturbed and distorted. The remuneration is overvalued in relation to the labour productivity. Such a ratio is not a positive testimony to the reasonableness of management in the sense of agricultural producers’ equilibria.


Semiotica ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (209) ◽  
pp. 77-97
Author(s):  
Tony Blackshield ◽  
Rosemary Huisman

AbstractA feature of the modern consumer economy is the so-called “standard form contract,” printed in advance to establish the terms on which a corporate supplier deals with its customers. Typically these terms include an “exemption clause,” seeking to limit the supplier’s liability for loss or damage, and often to exclude legal liability altogether. Sometimes such clauses are given effect according to their apparent intention, but in other cases judges may endeavor to avoid that result – either by denying the clause any legal effect whatsoever, or by reading it so as not to apply to the precise kind of liability that has in fact arisen. We illustrate these varied responses by reference to judicial decisions in England, Australia, and India. The analysis suggests different expectations within these different judicial discourse communities: in England, from 1980 onwards, the renewed ideological emphasis on freedom of contract led judges to retreat from the creative solutions of earlier decades, returning to an emphasis on the actual words of such clauses; in Australia, in contrast, judges declined to take part in such a retreat; in India, a prevailing insistence on the need to interpret contracts strictly according to their literal terms has failed to prevent occasional attempts at ingenious interpretive solutions.


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