As I mentioned in a post last week, ContractsProf Blog has been
hosting an on-line symposium on Peggy Radin’s new book, Boilerplate: The Fine Print, Vanishing Rights and the Rule of Law,
which continues into next week. If you
haven’t yet read Boilerplate, I
highly recommend it. The book is no less than you would expect from Peggy
Radin, which is to say: bold, thoughtful, and almost certain to be
influential.
I’ll post something here, of course, once next week’s
reviews (including my own) appear over at ContractsProf. But for those wanting a preview, the images included in this post should give a taste (click the liability waiver to enlarge, and you may have to zoom to read all of the text.) Those of you who know me, and are also
familiar with Peggy’s work, will not be surprised to learn that we have very
different views regarding the virtues of private ordering as compared to public
solutions, particularly when it comes to substantive limitations on freedom of
contract. But, as is the case with her
work on contested commodities, Peggy forces us to think hard about the
potential shortcomings of private ordering in certain contexts.
I remain largely unconvinced that substantive restrictions
on freedom of contract are the best way to overcome those limitations, but
Peggy has very thoughtfully shown the increasingly poor fit between many
traditional contract law principles and modern day contracting practices. The issues raised by Boilerplate likely will continue to generate discussion over the
coming years. In any event, read the
book if you haven’t done so already, as well as this review
by Omri Ben-Shahar, and stay tuned for further posts in the on-line
symposium.
(The author, in Patagonia, after signing the above liability waiver)
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