A modest proposal to fix contracts
Rescuing contracts from sprawling garbage legalese novellas masquerading as “agreements.”
Every time I click through one of those garbage legalese novellas you’re expected to say “I Agree” to before doing something totally normal and inconsequential, I’m reminded of the legendary Lenny Bruce bit “Eat, Sleep and Crap.”
http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=24181
In this bit, all civilization begins with agreements:
“Let’s see. I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll have a vote. We’ll sleep in Area A. Is that cool?”
“OK, good.”
“We’ll eat in Area B. Good?”
“Good.”
“We’ll throw a crap in area C. Good?”
This social contract is the foundation of civilization. It’s why you don’t die from fecal-oral bacterial transmission.
Naturally, the legal profession has put a little more detail into the idea of what constitutes a contract in the years since. As Stanford Law’s Mark Lemley writes in “The Benefit of the Bargain,” “A canonical contract is a written agreement negotiated between two sophisticated parties.”
