When you buy something at Wal-Mart, your sales contract is the UCC. When you order something online or by phone, and neither of you specify details of things like form of payment, warranties, shipping... those details are filled in by the UCC. And it's called "uniform" because all of the states have individually codified the same default contract into their state laws.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/table_ucc
This uniform contract is also where several warranties arise that people take as a given precisely because the UCC inserts them into every sale that doesn't disclaim them: the warranties of merchantability and fitness for a purpose. Those are your guarantees that when you buy something from someone, the goods will do the thing they're supposed to do and there's nothing significantly wrong with them. It's why you have a right to a refund/return when the thing you bought is broken, or doesn't do what it says it does.
https://www.clearygottlieb.com//news-and-insights/publicatio...
> Article 12 – dealing directly with the acquisition and disposition of interests (including security interests) in “controllable electronic records,” which would include Bitcoin, Ether, and a variety of other digital assets. Under Article 12 and associated amendments to Article 9, a party may perfect a security interest in certain controllable electronic records by obtaining “control” of such records. In addition, Article 12 confers an attribute of negotiability on controllable electronic records – a good faith purchaser for value who obtains control (a “qualifying purchaser”) takes its interest free of conflicting property claims.
This makes even more sense as software becomes a key component of more products.
The schoolhouse rock version of how a bill becomes law is basically pure fiction at this point. Certainly at the federal level I'm not sure a single so-called legislator is competent to draft a bill. Occasionally they will have their staff draft some showboat bill that will likely never even pass committee, but almost all the bills that become law are drafted by some interest group or other, who then hire lobbyists to find a "legislator" willing to rubber stamp it.
It's surprising that it's not more of a well known fact that the USA isn't even remotely a real popularly representative democracy, given how completely obvious it is to all but the most casual observer. Princeton even published a study on the subject[1].
[1] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...
And that study is false; what it actually shows is that elites and average citizens agree on most things that pass, not that only elites approve of them.
https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-...
Remember, when you come across some cynical information that shows the average person is a sheeple/NPC/etc, it’s not true! Average people are usually right.
In those cases where average people and elites do disagree, such as border security, the elites reliably get their way.
And yes I’ve seen the shoddy attempts to refute the Princeton study. They’re unconvincing.
As one example, which is a quite similar case, the standard lease contract for apartments in Germany is 4 pages. In the USA I’ve had between 21 and 27 pages so far.
And, as long as it doesn't breach any explicit laws, that condition is equally enforceable.
The German system above appears to specifically address that issue with US law.
That isn't true; if the court concludes that no reasonable person would ever have knowingly agreed, it will find that the condition is unenforceable. It's a real standard, but I don't recall the relevant technical terms.
Obviously it's hard to meet that standard, but breaching an explicit law is very much not a requirement for unenforceability.
edit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_v._Walker-Thomas_Furn....
> when a party of little bargaining power, and hence little real choice, signs a commercially unreasonable contract with little or no knowledge of its terms, it is hardly likely that his consent, or even an objective manifestation of his consent, was ever given to all the terms.
> In such a case the usual rule that the terms of the agreement are not to be questioned should be abandoned and the court should consider whether the terms of the contract are so unfair that enforcement should be withheld.
Point 1: You're probably yourselves vs a professional management company / large property owner. They obviously bring more resources and experience to a legal case than you do, in addition to simply having more time to engage in one.
Point 2: That's assuming you can even take the case to court, and didn't sign away any disputes into arbitration.
I don't think that matters at all; if you have a term in your contract that a court will find unconscionable, an arbitrator is... shall we say, extremely likely to find the same thing.
You're also free to haul the arbitrator into court if they make an egregious ruling. The fact that you were subject to binding arbitration and the arbitrator awarded your firstborn son to the company isn't going to be any more convincing to a judge than the alternative fact that your contract clearly states you're giving up your firstborn son to the company.
That actually works against them in court, especially in the particular scenario being discussed.
And furthermore, it's a common misconception that something is 'legal' to stipulate just because they've seen it in their contracts before. People put unenforceable crap in contracts all the time because 9/10 people will just believe it's enforceable and go along with it.
Notice how anything related to wealth management (contracts, financial concepts and practices, etc) is rarely (if ever) included in compulsory schooling.
This is by design.
https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/data-most-states-re...
So we ended up with Western education systems that produce intellectuals who conceptually despise wealth management, ensuring education remains thoroughly detached from the actual levers of power. That suits rulers just fine.
Generally, contracts on the US where there is one party who writes them and another party who doesn't get to edit them (leases, employment contracts, etc.) have a lot of case law about what can and can't be enforced on the party who doesn't have authorship control. Contacts where both parties are writing them have a lot more freedom to screw a participant, but also generally savvier participants.
I don't feel its unreasonable to read through a dozen or two pages of contracts for something like a rental lease that will eat up 30% of your income for the next year; and I've never felt that my city/state is in dire need of improving the situation. The problem with online service terms is more-so that: they aren't standardized, they all say different things, they oftentimes claim things that aren't legally enforceable, they're usually a UI afterthought... they're just bad. We do need some kind of legislation for those. I don't feel that requiring a summary is the answer.
He's a good, law abiding fellow, so he did it. It was the last thing he needed to deal with on top of all the stress of moving. I would have just ignored it, let them take me to court if they want.
Parsing 20+ pages of legalese, when it could be shipped as a diff instead, is simply inefficient.
Given the number of different templates floating around tailored to most individual states, that’s either an extreme coincidence, or there is shared ownership, management, or legal representation between the different apartment complexes.
I won't swear that this is correct, or that it still works that way, but that was my impression.
I'm also sure that a lot of people still rented apartments on handshake, unwritten, or under-the-table deals for a variety of reasons.
https://eforms.com/rental/tx/texas-standard-residential-leas...
I mention this because it's sort of an example of it "having been achieved" in the past, albeit not in the lawmaking sense.
Either what you put in the contract is a law, so it is effective no matter if you write it or not, or it isn't and in this case, there is a high chance it is considered abusive and therefore not legally enforceable. In fact, you might as well not write anything at all! If someone lives on someone's property and pays money in exchange, there is an implicit contract with standard clauses between the two parties. I think the only additional right a written contract can give a landlord is to increase the rent, but by no more than the inflation rate.
Garage access is only an issue if you pay for it. If you pay for a garage, the landlord has to ensure you have access and depending on the type of contract, ensure you are the only one with access (re; shared vs solo garages).
The Pet Clause thing only concerns big pets. Anything the size of a normal house cat or smaller (except actual house cats and exotic/unusual pets) requires no special permission. If larger pets are banned, this is only valid if there is a contract condition to allow the tenant to get special permission to have a cat or dog. A total and general ban of all pets is considered too disadvantageous for the tenant and thus not allowed. When asking for permission, the denial must have an explanation attached. "Pet can cause damage" isn't allowed for example, since the owner could just buy a pet insurance to cover any claims. Noise and dirt aren't either, since the landlord can require the owner to take care of that. Basically the explanation of why you deny a pet has to be something that the owner doesn't have the power to change easily, such as that the landlord is allergic and living in the flat above you or similar things.
This kinda stuff is usually added at the end of the template contract, there isn'T a lot to read so they tend to be obvious.