Tal Kastner (Rutgers Law School) has posted Contract and Boilerplate (Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Law and Literature 104 (Robert Spoo & Simon Stern eds., 2025)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Contract has long shaped how Americans experience and imagine freedom. Viewed as a voluntary transaction between relative equals, contract operates as an ideal and as a form of expression that invites the force of law. It thereby illuminates the challenges of communication and the impact of context and power on speech acts. Boilerplate, or standardized contract language, refracts the presumed context of contract, which itself changes in its particularity over time. Evoking citationality and the disseminative process of communication, boilerplate sheds light on the values and context that inform the practice and idea of contract in the United States.
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