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This Article is the first to empirically examine whether firms draft well-organized online contracts that consumers can easily read, navigate, and analyze. "Messy Contracts," as this Article dubs them, are contracts that lack organizational signals in the form of a table of contents and informative headings. Analyzing the sign-in-wrap agreements employed by the most popular 100 websites--such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tik-Tok, Walmart, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Amazon--this Article finds that businesses routinely draft messy contracts. The importance of this finding goes beyond what initially meets the eye. Messy contracts (1) reduce consumers' comprehension; (2) impose excessive cognitive costs on consumers, consumer advocates, watchdog organizations, and adjudicators who wish to read or navigate the contract or part of it; (3) undermine consumers' ability to remember the contracts' content, and (4) deter consumers from reading contracts. Furthermore, messy contracts indicate that competition over contract terms is lacking and that firms can utilize the features of the online environment to draft consumer contracts without accounting for consumers' needs more generally. Alarmingly, messy contracts may also denote that term ignorance may drive consumers' assent. In all, messy contracts facilitate exploitation, often harming the most vulnerable consumers. Part II of this Article provides the theoretical background to messy contracts. It contextualizes the problem of messy contracts, linking them to the 'no-reading' problem and delineating their social costs. Part III contains the empirical test of this Article. It discusses the sample contracts, the empirical methodology, and our results. Against this background, Part IV considers the normative implications of messy contracts, suggesting ex ante regulatory measures and ex post judicial scrutiny. It also acknowledges the limitations of our proposals and replies to key critiques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK Space Industry Act 2018 has now been supplemented with the new Space Industry Regulations. While examples of Space Tourism grace our screens and newsfeeds on an increasingly regular basis such as William Shatner's recent voyage (Luscombe, 2021) the UK Regulations also pave the way for 'human occupants' (UK Space Industry Regulations, Regulation 2) to experience such a flight (UK Space Agency, 2020). A key part of the regulations pertaining to human occupants is that they must provide 'informed consent' before embarking on such a flight. If, as is likely to be the case, future courts are to draw analogies with the current state of medical law in this area, spaceflight operators will have to tread carefully if they are to avoid vitiating any informed consent by 'bombarding' any willing human occupant with technical detail prior to their flight (Simmonds, 2020). Whilst this could prove legally problematic for 'capacitous' individuals within the meaning of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, it is likely to be even more so for those who could be deemed, in some aspects of their cognitive ability, to lack capacity. UK Space Legislation as it presently stands faces three problems: 1) There is presently no legal mechanism under UK Space Law to determine capacity. 2) As examples from the Court of Protection indicate, 'capacity' is a very nuanced legal concept and individuals who, on the fact of things, may appear to lack capacity as regards potentially risky activities, have been regarded by the Courts as, at least, partially capacitous in respect of certain decisions. Operators may find themselves having to tread a fine line to avoid claims of discrimination. 3) because of point 1) and the state of the Law of Contract as regards contractual relationships entered into by potentially incapacitous individuals, further significant legal problems may present themselves. This paper will focus primarily on the Law in England and Wales but some of the overarching conclusions will be of relevance to all UK jurisdictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Iliad dwells on the wrath felt over an act of transgression. The backdrop for the story is the legend about the abduction of Helen by Paris while a guest at the palace of her husband Menelaos. Violation of the guest-host relationship starts the Trojan War. Yet the Iliad itself starts with Achilles' wrath over Agamemnon's taking of the young warrior's companion, Briseis, while the Greeks have Troy under siege. Just as Helen is the disputed object of desire between Menelaos and Paris, Briseis is the disputed object of desire between Achilles and Agamemnon. We can project a fourth element to both love triangles to assess the loss caused by the mimetic rivalry. Hector and Patroclus represent the measure of loss in the two quadrangular relationships. We should ponder over how the quest for appeasement in a war epic results in a peaceful ending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid rise of digital platforms such as Airbnb has facilitated the growth of peer-to-peer (P2P) hires into an economy of considerable value. Despite its growing significance there has been little attention on P2P sharing from private law and regulation, resulting in a dearth of legal norms fit for governing the provision of goods and services amongst consumer peers. This regulatory gap has enabled commercial platforms to construct elaborate contractual frameworks which they use to dictate the terms of engagement for large swathes of the P2P market and impose obligations on private parties. To address this gap, this paper proposes the use of bailment as a potential instrument in governing norms for P2P sharing, with the aims of harmonising participants' legal obligations, protecting them from the vagaries of platforms' user policies, and managing their risks as they engage in sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Chilena de Derecho is the property of Revista Chilena de Derecho and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

One of the most hotly debated subjects in the legal community is good faith, which is a crucial defense in European contract law. Although it is a widely acknowledged idea, there is no agreement on how important good faith is in today's civil contractual responsibilities. This essay's goal is to explore the good faith principle, elucidating its meaning and describing how it is reflected in Iraqi law. Good faith is discussed in terms of both its subjective and objective implications. The objective meaning of good faith is seen as a way to preserve moral contractual connections and lessen potential disparities brought on by the doctrine of party autonomy. According to the subjective definition, good faith might relate to situations when a person acts with trust that what they are doing is legal or when a third party is seeking protection. This essay also aims to examine the notion of good faith from the perspective of Iraqi law. It is considered that Albania's theory is not particularly sophisticated. It should be emphasized that legal precedent varies and that whether good faith may be removed from a contract is still up for dispute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

T erms of service and privacy policies are long complicated legal documents. Users agree to the terms of these agreements without reading or understanding their rights and responsibilities. People of all ages and backgrounds are subjected to mostly unregulated contracts and uses of personal data from nearly every facet of modern life. Social media, banking, gaming, news, healthcare, education, and work have terms of service and privacy policies that users must adhere to, usually with no opportunity to negotiate terms, or they can choose to not take part in that part of life. Companies such as Facebook and Apple use deliberately long and confusing terms of service with linked documents, to confuse or hide policies or controls. The contracts can be updated or changed whenever the company decides. Other companies such as Google, choose to write shorter, vague policies to give broad access and permissions to user's information. Most users do not believe they have the time or ability to read or understand the contracts they are agreeing to. There are no laws in the United States that governs how understandable terms of service, acceptable use, or privacy policies must be. With no legal or administrative requirements, companies are legally permitted to create long confusing agreements and require users to sign to use their services. This article highlights the issues with examples and offers a legislative solution using successful reforms of the past linked to plain language, the Fair Credit and Charge Card Disclosure Act, and Android mobile permissions enhancements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Romanian Review of Private Law / Revista Română de Drept Privat is the property of Universul Juridic Publishing House and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Romanian Review of Private Law / Revista Română de Drept Privat is the property of Universul Juridic Publishing House and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Contract law is a crucial aspect that aids in maintaining business partnerships and protecting contracting parties. Businesses can build relationships and engage in transactions more quickly if they comprehend the elements that render a contract enforceable and the potential repercussions of breaching an agreement. However, contract law principles might vary from country to country. Moreover, despite numerous parallels, Islamic and Sharia law treat contract law differently than western law. Furthermore, Sharia law is frequently distinct and more stringent than the laws of many Muslim nations. In this study, the researcher analyzed Islamic and Sharia contract law with Iraqi Contract law to determine whether Iraqi law is a hybrid of Sharia and western law. Despite being slightly more flexible, it was discovered that Iraqi contract law is mainly founded on and adheres to sharia teachings and contractual criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Galician Journal of Economics / Revista Galega de Economía is the property of Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Servicio de Publicaciones and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Both Islamic law and Pakistani law mandate that in order to create a valid and enforceable contract, parties should have capacity to contract and for that purpose minor is considered incompetent. However, on the points of the criteria used to ascertain the majority, effects associated to the contract thus concluded by minor either independently or with the permission of guardian, Islamic law and Pakistani law are having analytical inconsistency. This can be put to rights if all questions relating to the contracts involving minor are regulated by existence of capacity to contracting parties and an objective criterion for the determination of such capacity is laid down. To this aim, this paper explores the statutory and precedential law of Pakistan and interpretations of Muslim jurists on the subject to find out that prescription of certain age for the identification of majority brings more certainty into the law governing the contract regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differences in the civil law system in each country will substantially distinguish the legal principles adopted and the regulation of the treaty law. This study seeks to analyze the principles of law that exist in Indonesia in ensuring certainty in the implementation of contracts as a derivation of treaty law. In general, the basic principles of treaty law have been legalized in various forms of regulations and in the national legal system. Taking various perspectives on the main theories on justice and expediency, this study originally focused on the state's authority to guarantee the rights of citizens in agreements. The results of the study revealed that the principle of consensualism relating to the birth of the contract, the principle of freedom of contract relating to the contents of the contract and the principle of binding force relating to the effect of the contract of principles in carrying out the agreement absolutely must be fulfilled if the parties agree to bind themselves in carrying out legal actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Romanian Journal of Comparative Law / Revista Romana de Drept Comparat is the property of Universul Juridic Publishing House and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Romanian Review of Private Law / Revista Română de Drept Privat is the property of Universul Juridic Publishing House and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Chilena de Derecho is the property of Revista Chilena de Derecho and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Procesos Historicos is the property of Universidad de Los Andes (Venezuela) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The world of the 'Internet of Things' ('IoT') is just one manifestation of recent developments in information and communication technologies ('ICTs'), closely tied to others, including 'cloud computing' and 'big data'. For our purposes, the 'Thing' in the IoT is any physical entity capable of connectivity that directly interfaces the physical world, such as embedded devices, sensors and actuators. In considering IoT contracts, this paper adopts a case study approach, examining the complexity of IoT through the lens of a specific product: the Nest connected thermostat, part of the Nest Labs business and owned by Google. We focus on the 'legals' of Nest (contractual documents, licences, etc.) to provide a case study of IoT complexity. After touching on some general contract law issues in relation to the IoT supply chain, we examine the rights and obligations represented in these legals and discuss the extent to which, collectively, they present a coherent and comprehensible private law framework. We then consider the extent to which certain statutory regimes may treat IoT contracts in terms of addressing two characteristic contractual concerns: liability attribution and unfair terms. Our main conclusion is that the world of IoT demonstrates a need to consider recasting the concept of product to reflect the frequent inextricable mixture of hardware, software, data and service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the series of strikes initiated by staff nurses in private hospitals in the state of Kerala. In spite of the growth of private sector health care institutions, working terms and conditions of nursing professionals are structured by a deeply iniquitous ethos. A number of strikes were organised that generated public interest and resulted in some potential long-term changes in the perspectives on health care professionals’ recruitment and terms of work. How did the nurses in the private sector negotiate their demand for better working conditions using strike as a strategy? What were the responses of the key stakeholders and the general public? It is obvious that gender mediated the negotiations between the state, private sector hospital managements and unions, on the one hand, and nurses who were predominantly women, on the other. In that case, what were the ways in which gender was factored into the discussions? This bears important implications for the regulation and governance of the private health care sector. This article thus argues that the legislation on clinical establishments should be expedited and any attempt to jeopardise it should be resisted; rather there should be collective efforts to work on the shortcomings of the Clinical Establishment (Registration and Regulation) Bill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the ways dental education is changing the way it is preparing the next generation of learners is through efficient utilization of interactive social media. Social media, which facilitates interaction and sharing of new ideas, is being utilized to educate students, residents, and faculty. Unfortunately, as with most improvements in technology, there are growing pains. Faculty, student, and patient interaction on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, can lead to inappropriate or embarrassing situations. Striking the appropriate balance between free speech rights of students and faculty and the need for colleges and universities to have efficient operations is often left to the judicial system. The concepts of free speech and contract law and how each is applied in educational settings should be understood by students, faculty, and administrators. This article provides a review of legal cases that led to current social media policies, as well as present-day cases that exemplify the application of these principles, to help dental educators gain a greater understanding of the boundaries of protected speech. It also provides a set of sample guidelines for communicating through these media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Japanese Sociological Review / Shakaigaku Hyoron is the property of Japan Sociological Society and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Collected Papers of Zagreb Law Faculty / Zbornik Pravnog Fakulteta u Zagrebu is the property of Sveuciliste u Zagrebu, Pravni Fakultet and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the Indian law on the legal protection of software, and the different types of software contracts entered into by companies. A description of the two principal modes of intellectual property (IP) protection of software is offered. It examines the growth of software in India since the 1990s. The author further explains the Indian practice and legislation in formulating software contracts and licence agreements.

Abstract: A lack of transparency in the hotel ranking system presents a serious problem for the industry. This is especially the case when it comes to providing information to the consumer and converting quality standards into binding standards. Since quality management is not merely a strategy for commercialisation, the aim of the first part of this research paper is to offer companies recommendations from a contract law perspective. This area of law reveals that a reduction in price can be very useful for facing quality failures. For this reason, the second part of this paper examines the requirements of such a remedy for non-performance and promotes the application of scales for calculating a price reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Estudios Socio-Jurídicos is the property of Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Senora del Rosario and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study examines legislation that would grant growers termination damages if their contracts are terminated. Our model suggests that, with no contracting frictions, damages would not reduce ex ante efficiency as processors can contract around damages through contract restructuring. Growers would earn less under continuation but would be protected if terminated, although overall expected profits would be unaffected. However, when contracting frictions exist, then efficiency losses can occur as processors would be constrained in restructuring contractual incentives to deal with moral hazard. Growers' expected profits would increase while processors' profits would decrease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how feasible it is to achieve approximated contract law provisions in the European Union comprising Member States with considerably diverging legal attitudes towards regulating contractual relationship. Issues as to the form and content the future Common Frame of Reference (CFR) should embody are at the core of present analysis. The article aims to show that the success of contract law harmonisation in Europe largely depends on the chosen method for approximation and determination of limits for harmonisation. Discovery of commonly accepted standards (basic values) among different jurisdictions in the European Union is presented as an initial yet a necessary precondition for further contract law harmonisation procedures. Identification of common contract law values along with the advantages of harmonisation method are the basic tools for both: achieving balance between aimed uniform contract law and preservation of distinct national traditions inherent in contractual relationship. At the very outset the article outlines the controversial situation that approximation of European contract law currently faces. The following part of the article seeks to describe the relevance of common values in the course of contract law harmonisation. The expedience of various contract law approximation mechanisms is further discussed in this article. Finally, the article assesses the anticipated positive impact the proposed scenario should pose upon national contract law systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores restrictions that are being applied to New Zealand public domain books once they have been digitized and hosted online. The study assesses access and usage restrictions within six online repositories, using a sample of 100 pre-1890 New Zealand heritage books. The findings indicate that new restrictions are being applied to works no longer protected by copyright. Out of the 50 titles that had been digitized, only three were hosted by repositories that do not restrict any type of subsequent use. Furthermore, 48 percent (24) were subject to access restrictions. Copyright law's delicate balance between public and private interests is being eroded by the prevalence of online terms and conditions, which invoke the doctrine of contract law in an attempt to restrict the public domain and opt--out of limitations upon copyright. Furthermore, ambiguity surrounding the copyright status of some books is encouraging digitizers to adopt restrictive access policies, even when a work is highly likely to be in the public domain. Unless clear rules of online curatorship are articulated within legislation, previously liberated public domain works are at risk of being restricted by online intermediaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]