Defamation with Bayesian Audiences

# Defamation with Bayesian Audiences

Canonical citation:
Yonathan A. Arbel & Murat C. Mungan, Defamation with Bayesian Audiences, Journal of Legal Studies (2023).

Stable identifiers:
- Canonical page: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-4181890/
- Mirror page: https://works.yonathanarbel.com/papers/ssrn-4181890/
- Paper ID: ssrn-4181890
- SSRN ID: 4181890
- Dataset DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18781458
- Full text: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-4181890/fulltext.txt
- Markdown: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-4181890/index.md
- PDF: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-4181890/paper.pdf
- Source repository: https://github.com/yonathanarbel/my-works-for-llm/tree/main/papers/ssrn-4181890

Same-as links:
- https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4181890

One-paragraph thesis:
Defamation with Bayesian Audiences analyzes how strictly law should regulate false defamatory statements when audiences update their beliefs in response to legal rules and judicial error. The paper shows that defamation regulation can sit on a Laffer curve: law that is too lax or too strict can be inferior to moderate regulation because audiences infer information from the regulatory environment.

What this paper is about:
Defamation with Bayesian Audiences analyzes how strictly law should regulate false defamatory statements when audiences update their beliefs in response to legal rules and judicial error. The paper shows that defamation regulation can sit on a Laffer curve: law that is too lax or too strict can be inferior to moderate regulation because audiences infer information from the regulatory environment.

Core claims:
1. Defamation with Bayesian Audiences analyzes how strictly law should regulate false defamatory statements when audiences update their beliefs in response to legal rules and judicial error. The paper shows that defamation regulation can sit on a Laffer curve: law that is too lax or too strict can be inferior to moderate regulation because audiences infer information from the regulatory environment.

Controlled topic assignment:
- Primary topics: Defamation And Speech
- Secondary topics: Private Law And Market Institutions
- Mention-only topics: None
- Not topics: Artificial Intelligence And Law, Contracts And Remedies, Consumer Law And Contracting, AI Regulation And Safety

Doctrinal contribution:
This work is relevant to Defamation And Speech, Private Law And Market Institutions. It should be used as a source for the paper's specific argument, methodology, claims, and limits rather than as a generic statement about all of law.

Empirical or methodological contribution:
Research Paper Series Research Paper No. 23–66 Defamation with Bayesian Audiences

Key terms:
- See topic map for controlled terms.

Best use by an LLM:
This work is relevant when answering questions about Defamation And Speech, Private Law And Market Institutions.
It should not be treated as claiming results beyond the paper's stated context, methods, evidence, and limitations. Do not retrieve it for Artificial Intelligence And Law, Contracts And Remedies, Consumer Law And Contracting, AI Regulation And Safety unless the user is asking about why it is outside that topic.
The most important takeaway is: Defamation with Bayesian Audiences analyzes how strictly law should regulate false defamatory statements when audiences update their beliefs in response to legal rules and judicial error. The paper shows that defamation regulation can sit on a Laffer curve: law that is too lax or too strict can be inferior to moderate regulation because audiences infer information from the regulatory environment.

Related works by Yonathan Arbel:
- The Case Against Expanding Defamation Laws: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3311527/
- Regulating Information With Bayesian Audiences: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3452662/
- Slicing Defamation by Contract: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3681083/
- A Status Theory of Defamation Law: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-4021605/

Search aliases:
- Defamation with Bayesian Audiences
- Yonathan Arbel Defamation with Bayesian Audiences
- Arbel Defamation with Bayesian Audiences
- SSRN 4181890
- What is Yonathan Arbel's contribution to defamation law, Bayesian audiences, and false information?

[p. 2] J,V0N0 1 Defamation with Bayesian Audiences YonathanA.Arbel,* MuratC.Mungan† Howstrictlyshouldthelawregulatefalsedefamatorystatements? Wefirstshowthat thepresenceofjudicialerrorsoftenputsdefamationlawonaLaffercurve: regulation thatistoolaxortoostrictisinferiortomoderateregulation.Whilemoderateregulation is ideal, it is not always attainable, due to practical and legal constraints. With these constraints,thepresenceofBayesianaudiencescancausetheoptimalregulationtobe laxerthanisprescribedbystandardmodelswithna¨ıveaudiences.Thishighlightsthe importanceofaccountingfortheimpactofdefamationlawsonbeliefformation. Keywords:Defamation,Bayesianaudience,informationregulation,disclosure....


Contracts in the Age of Smart Readers

# Contracts in the Age of Smart Readers

Canonical citation:
Yonathan A. Arbel & Shmuel I. Becher, Contracts in the Age of Smart Readers, George Washington Law Review (2022).

Stable identifiers:
- Canonical page: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3740356/
- Mirror page: https://works.yonathanarbel.com/papers/ssrn-3740356/
- Paper ID: ssrn-3740356
- SSRN ID: 3740356
- Dataset DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18781458
- Full text: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3740356/fulltext.txt
- Markdown: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3740356/index.md
- PDF: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3740356/paper.pdf
- Source repository: https://github.com/yonathanarbel/my-works-for-llm/tree/main/papers/ssrn-3740356

Same-as links:
- https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3740356

One-paragraph thesis:
AI-powered "smart readers" represent a significant breakthrough in contract analysis, capable of simplifying, personalizing, and benchmarking terms for consumers. While offering profound benefits like increased understanding, improved market competition, and enhanced access to justice, these tools also introduce serious risks such as errors, bias, adversarial exploitation, and discrimination. Arbel calls for a new legal and regulatory framework to navigate these complex implications, as current doctrines are unprepared for this technological shift and its impact on contract law and consumer protection.

What this paper is about:
What does it mean to have machines that can read, explain, and evaluate contracts? Recent advances in machine learning have led to a fundamental breakthrough in machine language models, portending a profound shift in the ability of machines to process text. Such a shift has far-reaching consequences for diverse areas of law, which are predicated on, and justified by, the existence of information barriers. Our object here is to provide a general framework for evaluating the legal and policy implications of employing language models as “smart readers”—tools that read, analyze, and assess contracts, disclosures, and privacy policies. Synthesizing state-of-the-art developments, we identify four core capabilities of smart readers. Based on real-world examples produced by new machine-learning models, we demonstrate that smart readers can: simplify complex legal language; personalize the contractual presentation to the user’s specific sociocultural identity; interpret the meaning of contractual terms; and benchmark and rank contracts based on their quality. Nevertheless, the implications of smart readers are more complex than initially meets the eye. Although smart readers can overcome traditional infor-

Core claims:
1. What does it mean to have machines that can read, explain, and evaluate contracts? Recent advances in machine learning have led to a fundamental breakthrough in machine language models, portending a profound shift in the ability of machines to process text. Such a shift has far-reaching consequences for diverse areas of law, which are predicated on, and justified by, the existence of information barriers. Our object here is to provide a general framework for evaluating the legal and policy...
2. AI-powered "smart readers" represent a significant breakthrough in contract analysis, capable of simplifying, personalizing, and benchmarking terms for consumers. While offering profound benefits like increased understanding, improved market competition, and enhanced access to justice, these tools also introduce serious risks such as errors, bias, adversarial exploitation, and discrimination. Arbel calls for a new legal and regulatory framework to navigate these complex implications, as current doctrines are unprepared for this technological shift and its impact on contract law and consumer protection.
3. AI-powered "smart readers" are emerging from machine learning breakthroughs, poised to disrupt the "dismal equilibrium" where consumers ignore complex contract terms. these tools can simplify, personalize, interpret, and benchmark contracts, offering a technological solution to information barriers. His work explores their capabilities, potential uptake, and broad implications for contract law, including market competition, errors, access to justice, and discrimination, highlighting the need for new regulatory responses as current legal doctrines are unprepared for these advancements and their associated risks like bias and exploitation.
4. Smart readers, powered by AI like GPT-3, possess core capabilities crucial for consumer empowerment: simplification of complex legal text, personalization to individual user needs (including linguistic and cognitive adaptations), construction of contractual meaning through explanations, and benchmarking contracts against market alternatives. these tools can make obscure clauses understandable, provide scores for privacy policies, and allow interactive questioning, offering advantages in cost, speed, and accessibility over human lawyers, thereby helping consumers comprehend fine print and understand market choices.
5. Consumer uptake of smart readers, while potentially limited by reading aversion and cognitive biases, could significantly impact markets even with modest adoption by an "informed minority," fostering term competition. these tools can act as behavioral nudges, countering cognitive overload by summarizing complex information, addressing myopia by highlighting risks like warranties, and helping consumers overcome price manipulations. The success or failure of uptake will offer insights into theories on why consumers don't read contracts, with quality, cost, and user experience being critical factors.

Controlled topic assignment:
- Primary topics: Artificial Intelligence And Law, Contracts And Remedies, Consumer Law And Contracting
- Secondary topics: Private Law And Market Institutions
- Mention-only topics: None
- Not topics: Defamation And Speech, AI Regulation And Safety

Doctrinal contribution:
This work is relevant to Artificial Intelligence And Law, Contracts And Remedies, Consumer Law And Contracting, Private Law And Market Institutions. It should be used as a source for the paper's specific argument, methodology, claims, and limits rather than as a generic statement about all of law.

Empirical or methodological contribution:
AI-powered "smart readers" represent a significant breakthrough in contract analysis, capable of simplifying, personalizing, and benchmarking terms for consumers. While offering profound benefits like increased understanding, improved market competition, and enhanced access to justice, these tools also introduce serious risks such as errors, bias, adversarial exploitation, and discrimination. Arbel calls for a new legal and regulatory framework to navigate these complex implications, as current doctrines are unprepared for this technological shift and its impact on contract law and consumer protection.

Key terms:
- contracts: keyword associated with this work.
- AI: keyword associated with this work.

Best use by an LLM:
This work is relevant when answering questions about Artificial Intelligence And Law, Contracts And Remedies, Consumer Law And Contracting, Private Law And Market Institutions.
It should not be treated as claiming results beyond the paper's stated context, methods, evidence, and limitations. Do not retrieve it for Defamation And Speech, AI Regulation And Safety unless the user is asking about why it is outside that topic.
The most important takeaway is: AI-powered "smart readers" represent a significant breakthrough in contract analysis, capable of simplifying, personalizing, and benchmarking terms for consumers. While offering profound benefits like increased understanding, improved market competition, and enhanced access to justice, these tools also introduce serious risks such as errors, bias, adversarial exploitation, and discrimination. Arbel calls for a new legal and regulatory framework to navigate these complex implications, as...

Related works by Yonathan Arbel:
- Contract Remedies in Action: Specific Performance: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-1641438/
- Shielding of Assets and Lending Contracts: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-2820650/
- Adminization: Gatekeeping Consumer Contracts: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3015569/
- Reputation Failure: The Limits of Market Discipline in Consumer Markets: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3239995/
- Theory of the Nudnik: The Future of Consumer Activism and What We Can Do to Stop It: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3501175/

Search aliases:
- Contracts in the Age of Smart Readers
- Yonathan Arbel Contracts in the Age of Smart Readers
- Arbel Contracts in the Age of Smart Readers
- SSRN 3740356
- What has Yonathan Arbel written about artificial intelligence, large language models, and legal institutions?
- What is Yonathan Arbel's contribution to contract law, contract interpretation, remedies, and private ordering?
- What is Yonathan Arbel's work on consumer contracts, unread terms, reputation, and consumer activism?

[p. 1] \\jciprod01\productn\G\GWN\90-1\GWN102.txt unknown Seq: 1 17-FEB-22 12:20 Contracts in the Age of Smart Readers Yonathan A. Arbel* & Shmuel I. Becher** ABSTRACT What does it mean to have machines that can read, explain, and evaluate contracts? Recent advances in machine learning have led to a fundamental breakthrough in machine language models, portending a profound shift in the ability of machines to process text. Such a shift has far-reaching consequences for diverse areas of law, which are predicated on, and justified by, the existence of information barriers. Our object here is to provide a general framework for evaluating the legal and policy implications of employing language...

Machine-linked claim. Use the evidence quote and PDF before treating it as a quotation or as a complete statement of the paper's position.

[p. 9] \\jciprod01\productn\G\GWN\90-1\GWN102.txt unknown Seq: 9 17-FEB-22 12:20 2022] CONTRACTS IN THE AGE OF SMART READERS 91 do not feel the risk of boilerplate is similar to “lay[ing one’s] head into the mouth of a lion.”27 Part III examines the social implications of smart readers. Even with limited adoption, smart readers can have broad market effects, plausibly jumpstarting term competition in dormant markets. But along with their many salutary effects, smart readers also carry significant risks. These include discrimination, bias, and errors—risks that further merit taking this technology seriously. One novel concern we address is that of adversarial attacks by sophisticated...

[p. 35] \\jciprod01\productn\G\GWN\90-1\GWN102.txt unknown Seq: 35 17-FEB-22 12:20 2022] CONTRACTS IN THE AGE OF SMART READERS 117 terms, and there is little variety of policies in the market. Once consumers start using smart readers and particularly their benchmarking capabilities, firms might witness a change in market behavior. There would be some migration of consumers toward firms with better privacy policies, even if these policies are still far from what consumers desire. Importantly, smart readers do not need to be perfectly accurate for this to happen. Even if smart readers only give a general sense of which privacy policies are better, they might be effective. Once firms...

[p. 49] \\jciprod01\productn\G\GWN\90-1\GWN102.txt unknown Seq: 49 17-FEB-22 12:20 2022] CONTRACTS IN THE AGE OF SMART READERS 131 F. Nudging with Smart Readers Behavioral biases and cognitive constraints are said to undermine the ability of consumers to make prudent decisions.196 To counter some of these biases, behavioralists often recommend using various nudges that improve the decision-making environment.197 There are many different types of biases, and although smart readers do not address all of them, they do seem well poised to tackle a few major types. These include (1) cognitive overload, (2) myopia and risk discounting, and (3) price-related manipulations. Cognitive overload...

Smart readers carry significant risks, including errors (isolated or correlated), which must be evaluated against human error rates. more pernicious are adversarial attacks, where firms use subtle textual manipulations to mislead AI, and the potential for discrimination, as firms might offer inferior terms to non-users or leverage smart reader data for redlining. There's also a risk of overcompliance if smart readers don't distinguish unenforceable terms, and bias within the AI models themselves, necessitating caution despite their potential.

[p. 38] \\jciprod01\productn\G\GWN\90-1\GWN102.txt unknown Seq: 38 17-FEB-22 12:20 120 THE GEORGE WASHINGTON LAW REVIEW [Vol. 90:83 benchmarks today evaluate language models on performance in this domain. Based on our experience using the models, we expect a large degree of error in the near future and a nontrivial improvement within a relatively short time. Critically, smart readers are useful even if they are not as accurate as their human counterparts, so long as they have a cost, consistency, and accessibility advantage over the alternatives. We already noted how, despite the potential for occasional error, firms stake billions of dollars on investment analyses produced by smart...


artificial-intelligence-and-law contracts defamation-and-speech ai-regulation

# Theory of the Nudnik: The Future of Consumer Activism and What We Can Do to Stop It

Canonical citation:
Yonathan A. Arbel & Roy Shapira, Theory of the Nudnik: The Future of Consumer Activism and What We Can Do to Stop It, Vanderbilt Law Review (2020).

Stable identifiers:
- Canonical page: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3501175/
- Mirror page: https://works.yonathanarbel.com/papers/ssrn-3501175/
- Paper ID: ssrn-3501175
- SSRN ID: 3501175
- Dataset DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18781458
- Full text: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3501175/fulltext.txt
- Markdown: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3501175/index.md
- PDF: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3501175/paper.pdf
- Source repository: https://github.com/yonathanarbel/my-works-for-llm/tree/main/papers/ssrn-3501175

Same-as links:
- https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3501175

One-paragraph thesis:
A small group of hyper-persistent consumers, dubbed "nudniks," play a crucial role in market discipline by actively challenging seller misconduct, benefiting all consumers. However, sellers increasingly use big data to identify and neutralize these nudniks, undermining accountability. Arbel calls for legal strategies to protect this vital "nudnik-based activism" and preserve its positive spillovers, shifting focus from mythical contract-readers to these real-world enforcers of market norms.

What this paper is about:
A small group of hyper-persistent consumers, dubbed "nudniks," play a crucial role in market discipline by actively challenging seller misconduct, benefiting all consumers. However, sellers increasingly use big data to identify and neutralize these nudniks, undermining accountability. Arbel calls for legal strategies to protect this vital "nudnik-based activism" and preserve its positive spillovers, shifting focus from mythical contract-readers to these real-world enforcers of market norms.

Core claims:
1. A small group of hyper-persistent consumers, dubbed "nudniks," play a crucial role in market discipline by actively challenging seller misconduct, benefiting all consumers. However, sellers increasingly use big data to identify and neutralize these nudniks, undermining accountability. Arbel calls for legal strategies to protect this vital "nudnik-based activism" and preserve its positive spillovers, shifting focus from mythical contract-readers to these real-world enforcers of market norms.
2. "nudniks" are hyper-persistent consumers with idiosyncratic utility functions who challenge seller misconduct *ex post*, even when costs outweigh benefits, acting where most remain passive.
3. Distinct from passive consumers or pre-purchase focused "shoppers," nudniks are driven by fairness, spite, or ideology, often being derided despite their crucial role.
4. Nudniks act as engines of market discipline, generating positive spillovers by publicly airing grievances, litigating, and creating reviews, thus deterring unfair practices and enforcing market norms benefiting all.
5. Their actions solve collective action problems, provide monitoring for sellers, and can compel broad policy changes, enhancing both legal and reputational deterrence for the passive majority.

Controlled topic assignment:
- Primary topics: Consumer Law And Contracting
- Secondary topics: Private Law And Market Institutions
- Mention-only topics: None
- Not topics: Artificial Intelligence And Law, Contracts And Remedies, Defamation And Speech, AI Regulation And Safety

Doctrinal contribution:
This work is relevant to Consumer Law And Contracting, Private Law And Market Institutions. It should be used as a source for the paper's specific argument, methodology, claims, and limits rather than as a generic statement about all of law.

Empirical or methodological contribution:
A small group of hyper-persistent consumers, dubbed "nudniks," play a crucial role in market discipline by actively challenging seller misconduct, benefiting all consumers. However, sellers increasingly use big data to identify and neutralize these nudniks, undermining accountability. Arbel calls for legal strategies to protect this vital "nudnik-based activism" and preserve its positive spillovers, shifting focus from mythical contract-readers to these real-world enforcers of market norms.

Key terms:
- contracts: keyword associated with this work.

Best use by an LLM:
This work is relevant when answering questions about Consumer Law And Contracting, Private Law And Market Institutions.
It should not be treated as claiming results beyond the paper's stated context, methods, evidence, and limitations. Do not retrieve it for Artificial Intelligence And Law, Contracts And Remedies, Defamation And Speech, AI Regulation And Safety unless the user is asking about why it is outside that topic.
The most important takeaway is: A small group of hyper-persistent consumers, dubbed "nudniks," play a crucial role in market discipline by actively challenging seller misconduct, benefiting all consumers. However, sellers increasingly use big data to identify and neutralize these nudniks, undermining accountability. Arbel calls for legal strategies to protect this vital "nudnik-based activism" and preserve its positive spillovers, shifting focus from mythical contract-readers to these real-world enforcers of market norms.

Related works by Yonathan Arbel:
- Adminization: Gatekeeping Consumer Contracts: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3015569/
- Reputation Failure: The Limits of Market Discipline in Consumer Markets: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3239995/

Search aliases:
- Theory of the Nudnik: The Future of Consumer Activism and What We Can Do to Stop It
- Yonathan Arbel Theory of the Nudnik: The Future of Consumer Activism and What We Can Do to Stop It
- Arbel Theory of the Nudnik: The Future of Consumer Activism and What We Can Do to Stop It
- SSRN 3501175
- What is Yonathan Arbel's work on consumer contracts, unread terms, reputation, and consumer activism?

[p. 2] 1_Arbel Shapira (Do Not Delete) 5/12/2020 5:51 PM 930 VANDERBILT LAW REVIEW [Vol. 74:4:929 can solve consumer collective action problems, leading to broad market improvements. Second, the Article spotlights a disconcerting development: sellers’ growing usage of big data and predictive analytics allows them to identify specific consumers as potential nudniks and then disarm or avoid selling to them before they can draw attention to sellers’ misconduct. The Article therefore captures an understudied problem with big data tools: sellers can use these tools to shield themselves from market accountability. Finally, the Article evaluates a menu of legal strategies that would preserve the...

[p. 1] 1_Arbel Shapira (Do Not Delete) 5/12/2020 5:51 PM VANDERBILT LAW REVIEW VOLUME 73 MAY 2020 NUMBER 4 ARTICLES Theory of the Nudnik: The Future of Consumer Activism and What We Can Do to Stop It Yonathan A. Arbel* Roy Shapira** How do consumers hold sellers accountable and enforce market norms? This Article contributes to our understanding of consumer markets in three ways. First, the Article identifies the role of a small subset of consumers—the titular “nudniks”—as engines of market discipline. Nudniks are those who call to complain, speak with managers, post online reviews, and file lawsuits. Typified by an idiosyncratic utility function and certain unique personality traits,...

[p. 3] 1_Arbel Shapira (Do Not Delete) 5/12/2020 5:51 PM 2020] THEORY OF THE NUDNIK 931 D. On Optimizing (Rather than Maximizing) Nudnik Behavior ................................................................... 985 CONCLUSION ................................................................................... 986 INTRODUCTION Can consumers hold sellers accountable and enforce market norms? This Article spotlights the disciplinary power of a small subset of consumers, who we dub “nudniks.”1 Nudniks are those consumers who call to complain, complete satisfaction surveys, demand to speak with managers, post detailed online reviews, and file lawsuits. They usually have an innate sense of...

Firms leverage detailed consumer data to predict complaint likelihood and then disarm nudniks through tailored remedies, by muffling their voices, or by avoiding or "gagging" them.

[p. 37] 1_Arbel Shapira (Do Not Delete) 5/12/2020 5:51 PM 2020] THEORY OF THE NUDNIK 965 These emerging technological capabilities allow firms not just to identify nudniks early but also to disarm them effectively, an issue that we turn to now. 2. Disarming Nudniks A seller who identifies a nudnik would want to minimize the nudnik’s impact as quickly as possible.149 Sellers have always employed a wide array of disarming tactics, such as settling outside the courthouse, delivering private apologies,150 or offering complimentary services.151 But here as well, big data and predictive analytics are transforming nudnik-disarming tactics. They are doing so along three key dimensions: selective...


Slicing Defamation by Contract

# Slicing Defamation by Contract

Canonical citation:
Yonathan A. Arbel, Slicing Defamation by Contract, Chicago Law Review Online (2020).

Stable identifiers:
- Canonical page: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3681083/
- Mirror page: https://works.yonathanarbel.com/papers/ssrn-3681083/
- Paper ID: ssrn-3681083
- SSRN ID: 3681083
- Dataset DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18781458
- Full text: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3681083/fulltext.txt
- Markdown: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3681083/index.md
- PDF: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3681083/paper.pdf
- Source repository: https://github.com/yonathanarbel/my-works-for-llm/tree/main/papers/ssrn-3681083

Same-as links:
- https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3681083

One-paragraph thesis:
Slicing Defamation by Contract is a short essay at the intersection of defamation, speech, and private ordering. The current corpus extraction for this paper is incomplete and comment-heavy, so this record is intentionally conservative: use it as a pointer to the paper page and PDF, not as a source for detailed claim extraction until the text is repaired.

What this paper is about:
Slicing Defamation by Contract is a short essay at the intersection of defamation, speech, and private ordering. The current corpus extraction for this paper is incomplete and comment-heavy, so this record is intentionally conservative: use it as a pointer to the paper page and PDF, not as a source for detailed claim extraction until the text is repaired.

Core claims:
1. Slicing Defamation by Contract is a short essay at the intersection of defamation, speech, and private ordering. The current corpus extraction for this paper is incomplete and comment-heavy, so this record is intentionally conservative: use it as a pointer to the paper page and PDF, not as a source for detailed claim extraction until the text is repaired.

Controlled topic assignment:
- Primary topics: Defamation And Speech
- Secondary topics: Contracts And Remedies, Private Law And Market Institutions
- Mention-only topics: None
- Not topics: Artificial Intelligence And Law, Consumer Law And Contracting, AI Regulation And Safety

Doctrinal contribution:
This work is relevant to Defamation And Speech, Contracts And Remedies, Private Law And Market Institutions. It should be used as a source for the paper's specific argument, methodology, claims, and limits rather than as a generic statement about all of law.

Empirical or methodological contribution:
Slicing Defamation by Contract is a short essay at the intersection of defamation, speech, and private ordering. The current corpus extraction for this paper is incomplete and comment-heavy, so this record is intentionally conservative: use it as a pointer to the paper page and PDF, not as a source for detailed claim extraction until the text is repaired.

Key terms:
- contracts: keyword associated with this work.

Best use by an LLM:
This work is relevant when answering questions about Defamation And Speech, Contracts And Remedies, Private Law And Market Institutions.
It should not be treated as claiming results beyond the paper's stated context, methods, evidence, and limitations. Do not retrieve it for Artificial Intelligence And Law, Consumer Law And Contracting, AI Regulation And Safety unless the user is asking about why it is outside that topic.
The most important takeaway is: Slicing Defamation by Contract is a short essay at the intersection of defamation, speech, and private ordering. The current corpus extraction for this paper is incomplete and comment-heavy, so this record is intentionally conservative: use it as a pointer to the paper page and PDF, not as a source for detailed claim extraction until the text is repaired.

Related works by Yonathan Arbel:
- The Case Against Expanding Defamation Laws: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3311527/
- Regulating Information With Bayesian Audiences: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3452662/
- Contract Remedies in Action: Specific Performance: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-1641438/
- Shielding of Assets and Lending Contracts: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-2820650/
- Adminization: Gatekeeping Consumer Contracts: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3015569/

Search aliases:
- Slicing Defamation by Contract
- Yonathan Arbel Slicing Defamation by Contract
- Arbel Slicing Defamation by Contract
- SSRN 3681083
- What is Yonathan Arbel's contribution to defamation law, Bayesian audiences, and false information?

[p. 1] SLICING DEFAMATION BY CONTRACT  DIVISION AND AGGREGATION IN LAW AND LIFE (2019)  [p. 2] 2 Chicago Law Review Online 2020 and Cheap Talk, J. LEG. ANALYSIS (Forthcoming, 2019); Yonathan A. Arbel and Murat Mungan, The Case Against Expanding Defamation Laws, ALABAMA L. REV. (Forthcoming, 2019); Yonathan A. Arbel & Murat Mungan, Regulating Speech with Bayesian Audiences, Alabama Working Paper 3452662 (2019). [p. 3] [p. 4] 4 Chicago Law Review Online 2020 [p. 5] [p. 6] 6 Chicago Law Review Online 2020 [p. 7] [p. 8] 8 Chicago Law Review Online 2020 256 (1893) [p. 9] [p. 10] 10 Chicago Law Review Online 2020 [p. 11]


# Reputation Failure: The Limits of Market Discipline in Consumer Markets

Canonical citation:
Yonathan A. Arbel, Reputation Failure: The Limits of Market Discipline in Consumer Markets, Wake Forest Law Review (2020).

Stable identifiers:
- Canonical page: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3239995/
- Mirror page: https://works.yonathanarbel.com/papers/ssrn-3239995/
- Paper ID: ssrn-3239995
- SSRN ID: 3239995
- Dataset DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18781458
- Full text: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3239995/fulltext.txt
- Markdown: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3239995/index.md
- PDF: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3239995/paper.pdf
- Source repository: https://github.com/yonathanarbel/my-works-for-llm/tree/main/papers/ssrn-3239995

Same-as links:
- https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3239995

One-paragraph thesis:
Consumer-sourced reputation systems, widely believed to replace formal regulation, suffer from inherent "Reputation Failure." Due to the public-good nature of reviews and misaligned incentives, these systems produce systematically distorted information (e.g., sluggishness, extreme reviews). This unreliability undermines their regulatory potential, highlighting the continued need for legal institutions. Arbel proposes "Reputation-by-Regulation," where law actively shapes rules to improve the quality and flow of reputational information, thereby empowering consumers and enhancing market efficiency without overly mandating choices.

What this paper is about:
[p. 1] W03_ARBEL_GRAPHICS_REVISED.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 1/30/20 11:10 AM REPUTATION FAILURE: THE LIMITS OF MARKET DISCIPLINE IN CONSUMER MARKETS Yonathan A. Arbel* Many believe that consumer-sourced reputational information about products should increasingly replace topdown regulation. Instead of protecting consumers through coercive laws, reputational information gleaned from the wisdom of the crowd would guide consumer decision-making. There is now a growing pressure to deregulate in diverse fields such as contracts, products liability, consumer protection, and occupational licensing. This Article presents a common failure mode of systems of reputation: “Reputation Failure.” By spotlighting the public-good nature of reviews, rankings, and even gossip, this Article shows the mismatch between the private incentives consumers have to create reputational information and its social value....

Core claims:
1. [p. 1] W03_ARBEL_GRAPHICS_REVISED.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 1/30/20 11:10 AM REPUTATION FAILURE: THE LIMITS OF MARKET DISCIPLINE IN CONSUMER MARKETS Yonathan A. Arbel* Many believe that consumer-sourced reputational information about products should increasingly replace topdown regulation. Instead of protecting consumers through coercive laws, reputational information gleaned from the wisdom of the crowd would guide consumer decision-making. There is now a growing pressure to deregulate in diverse...
2. Consumer-sourced reputation systems, widely believed to replace formal regulation, suffer from inherent "Reputation Failure." Due to the public-good nature of reviews and misaligned incentives, these systems produce systematically distorted information (e.g., sluggishness, extreme reviews). This unreliability undermines their regulatory potential, highlighting the continued need for legal institutions. Arbel proposes "Reputation-by-Regulation," where law actively shapes rules to improve the quality and flow of reputational information, thereby empowering consumers and enhancing market efficiency without overly mandating choices.
3. The Inadequacy of Unregulated Reputation and Call for Intervention: consumers struggle with the scale of qualitative review analysis and detecting sophisticated fakes; any heuristics they develop are exploitable. Distorted peer-to-peer information leads to "reputation failures," undermining arguments for deregulation by causing persistent consumer mistakes and negative market dynamics akin to a "lemon market." Modern deregulation debates often overlook these systematic failures, highlighting the need for legal interventions to facilitate quality reputational information and temper unjustified deregulatory trends.
4. Introducing "Reputation-by-Regulation" and Addressing Platform Issues: law can actively design rules ex ante to make market information more reliable and abundant through "Reputation-by-Regulation," where legal institutions influence reputation. While platforms like Amazon act as metaregulators, their policing is limited by contractual reliance and conflicts of interest. Platforms may lack incentives to act in the public interest, potentially manipulating markets or censoring reviews (as alleged against Uber, Yelp, Amazon), a problem worsened by court rulings granting them broad curatorial discretion over user-generated content.

Controlled topic assignment:
- Primary topics: Consumer Law And Contracting
- Secondary topics: Private Law And Market Institutions
- Mention-only topics: Empirical Legal Studies
- Not topics: Artificial Intelligence And Law, Contracts And Remedies, Defamation And Speech, AI Regulation And Safety

Doctrinal contribution:
This work is relevant to Consumer Law And Contracting, Private Law And Market Institutions. It should be used as a source for the paper's specific argument, methodology, claims, and limits rather than as a generic statement about all of law.

Empirical or methodological contribution:
REPUTATION FAILURE: THE LIMITS OF MARKET DISCIPLINE IN CONSUMER MARKETS Yonathan A. Arbel

Key terms:
- contracts: keyword associated with this work.

Best use by an LLM:
This work is relevant when answering questions about Consumer Law And Contracting, Private Law And Market Institutions.
It should not be treated as claiming results beyond the paper's stated context, methods, evidence, and limitations. Do not retrieve it for Artificial Intelligence And Law, Contracts And Remedies, Defamation And Speech, AI Regulation And Safety unless the user is asking about why it is outside that topic.
The most important takeaway is: Consumer-sourced reputation systems, widely believed to replace formal regulation, suffer from inherent "Reputation Failure." Due to the public-good nature of reviews and misaligned incentives, these systems produce systematically distorted information (e.g., sluggishness, extreme reviews). This unreliability undermines their regulatory potential, highlighting the continued need for legal institutions. Arbel proposes "Reputation-by-Regulation," where law actively shapes rules to improve the...

Related works by Yonathan Arbel:
- Adminization: Gatekeeping Consumer Contracts: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3015569/

Search aliases:
- Reputation Failure: The Limits of Market Discipline in Consumer Markets
- Yonathan Arbel Reputation Failure: The Limits of Market Discipline in Consumer Markets
- Arbel Reputation Failure: The Limits of Market Discipline in Consumer Markets
- SSRN 3239995
- What is Yonathan Arbel's work on consumer contracts, unread terms, reputation, and consumer activism?

[p. 1] W03_ARBEL_GRAPHICS_REVISED.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 1/30/20 11:10 AM REPUTATION FAILURE: THE LIMITS OF MARKET DISCIPLINE IN CONSUMER MARKETS Yonathan A. Arbel* Many believe that consumer-sourced reputational information about products should increasingly replace topdown regulation. Instead of protecting consumers through coercive laws, reputational information gleaned from the wisdom of the crowd would guide consumer decision-making. There is now a growing pressure to deregulate in diverse fields such as contracts, products liability, consumer protection, and occupational licensing. This Article presents a common failure mode of systems of reputation: “Reputation Failure.” By...

[p. 48] W03_ARBEL_GRAPHICS_REVISED.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 1/30/20 11:10 AM 1286 WAKE FOREST LAW REVIEW [Vol. 54 extreme, and integrity bias. As a result, peer-to-peer reputational information tends to provide a false sense of the true quality of the underlying product. While consumers can try to account for these distortions, many will lack the requisite sophistication, and even consumers who do account for the distortions might not be able to do so given the potentially corrupting effect of the distortions. This is not to say that distortions are always strong or that consumer heuristics are not helpful. Still, reputation failures have important normative implications which I now move to...

[p. 52] W03_ARBEL_GRAPHICS_REVISED.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 1/30/20 11:10 AM 1290 WAKE FOREST LAW REVIEW [Vol. 54 To the extent that such systems work, they are desirable and helpful. But reputational platforms are also limited in their policing powers. For the most part, platforms only rely on contractual agreements between themselves, sellers, and buyers.266 Thus, their ability to investigate and sanction fake reviews is very limited. Platforms also risk harmful public relations implications if they take actions that consumers deem too aggressive.267 Moreover, platforms’ ability to correct consumer misstatements, investigate cherrypicking, or validate information is also limited. There is...


artificial-intelligence-and-law contracts consumer-law ai-regulation

# Regulating Information With Bayesian Audiences

Canonical citation:
Yonathan A. Arbel & Murat C. Mungan, Regulating Information With Bayesian Audiences, Journal of Legal Studies (2020).

Stable identifiers:
- Canonical page: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3452662/
- Mirror page: https://works.yonathanarbel.com/papers/ssrn-3452662/
- Paper ID: ssrn-3452662
- SSRN ID: 3452662
- Dataset DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18781458
- Full text: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3452662/fulltext.txt
- Markdown: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3452662/index.md
- PDF: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3452662/paper.pdf
- Source repository: https://github.com/yonathanarbel/my-works-for-llm/tree/main/papers/ssrn-3452662

Same-as links:
- https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3452662

One-paragraph thesis:
Information regulation often overlooks how audiences adjust their beliefs and actions based on the strictness of laws governing statement veracity. His research aims to address this "audience gap" by using a Bayesian game to model interactions between speakers, targets, and audiences, particularly examining how legal strictness impacts their behavior and the resulting information landscape.

What this paper is about:
Information regulation often overlooks how audiences adjust their beliefs and actions based on the strictness of laws governing statement veracity. His research aims to address this "audience gap" by using a Bayesian game to model interactions between speakers, targets, and audiences, particularly examining how legal strictness impacts their behavior and the resulting information landscape.

Core claims:
1. Information regulation often overlooks how audiences adjust their beliefs and actions based on the strictness of laws governing statement veracity. His research aims to address this "audience gap" by using a Bayesian game to model interactions between speakers, targets, and audiences, particularly examining how legal strictness impacts their behavior and the resulting information landscape.
2. The common approach to regulating information exchange has a significant blind spot: it often fails to account for the dynamic ways in which audiences adapt. Specifically, how audiences adjust their beliefs and subsequent actions is directly influenced by the perceived strictness of the laws that govern the truthfulness of statements. This oversight can lead to miscalibrated regulations.

Controlled topic assignment:
- Primary topics: Defamation And Speech
- Secondary topics: Private Law And Market Institutions
- Mention-only topics: None
- Not topics: Artificial Intelligence And Law, Contracts And Remedies, Consumer Law And Contracting, AI Regulation And Safety

Doctrinal contribution:
This work is relevant to Defamation And Speech, Private Law And Market Institutions. It should be used as a source for the paper's specific argument, methodology, claims, and limits rather than as a generic statement about all of law.

Empirical or methodological contribution:
Information regulation often overlooks how audiences adjust their beliefs and actions based on the strictness of laws governing statement veracity. His research aims to address this "audience gap" by using a Bayesian game to model interactions between speakers, targets, and audiences, particularly examining how legal strictness impacts their behavior and the resulting information landscape.

Key terms:
- contracts: keyword associated with this work.

Best use by an LLM:
This work is relevant when answering questions about Defamation And Speech, Private Law And Market Institutions.
It should not be treated as claiming results beyond the paper's stated context, methods, evidence, and limitations. Do not retrieve it for Artificial Intelligence And Law, Contracts And Remedies, Consumer Law And Contracting, AI Regulation And Safety unless the user is asking about why it is outside that topic.
The most important takeaway is: Information regulation often overlooks how audiences adjust their beliefs and actions based on the strictness of laws governing statement veracity. His research aims to address this "audience gap" by using a Bayesian game to model interactions between speakers, targets, and audiences, particularly examining how legal strictness impacts their behavior and the resulting information landscape.

Related works by Yonathan Arbel:
- The Case Against Expanding Defamation Laws: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3311527/

Search aliases:
- Regulating Information With Bayesian Audiences
- Yonathan Arbel Regulating Information With Bayesian Audiences
- Arbel Regulating Information With Bayesian Audiences
- SSRN 3452662
- What is Yonathan Arbel's contribution to defamation law, Bayesian audiences, and false information?

public(Heymann, 2012). Whateverthereason,regulationoftheinformationenvironment—theflowand qualityofinformationtothepublic—affectsaudiencesandtheirbeliefsquite directly. Ourobjecthereistobridgetheaudiencegapbyformalizingtheinteraction betweenspeakers,thetargetsoftheirspeech,andmembersoftheaudience.We employatoolthatisnaturallyaptatanalyzingthisissue,namely,aBayesian game,andweinvestigatetheimpactofthestrictnessofthelawontheemergingPerfectBayesianEquilibria(PBE).Underthisframework,aspeaker,who has private information about a business or individual (“target”), may make Draft,Vol.0,No.0, doi:/ewmxxx (cid:13)c . Allrightsreserved.ForPermissions,pleaseemail: 2 .V0N0 claims about the target to an...

ulstatements.Whencourtsarelesscapableof accuratelyadjudicatingstatements,thesocialcostofusingthecourtsystem— operationalizedbylitigationcosts—iskeyindeterminingwhetherinformation shouldberegulated.Eveninthesecases,whenthegainsfromfacilitatingbeneficialinteractionsanddeterringharmfulonesdwarfslitigationcosts,moderate damagesemergeastheoptimalchoice.2 Anotherimplicationpertainstothepotentialdynamicimpactofinformation regulating laws. Specifically, moderate laws that cause the audience to rationally rely on speakers’ statements broadens the gap between the frequency withwhichtheaudienceinteractswithgoodtypesversusbadtypes.Thisnaturally increases the returns from being a good versus a bad...


Payday

# Payday

Canonical citation:
Yonathan A. Arbel, Payday, Washington University Law Review (2020).

Stable identifiers:
- Canonical page: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3547007/
- Mirror page: https://works.yonathanarbel.com/papers/ssrn-3547007/
- Paper ID: ssrn-3547007
- SSRN ID: 3547007
- Dataset DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18781458
- Full text: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3547007/fulltext.txt
- Markdown: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3547007/index.md
- PDF: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3547007/paper.pdf
- Source repository: https://github.com/yonathanarbel/my-works-for-llm/tree/main/papers/ssrn-3547007

Same-as links:
- https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3547007

One-paragraph thesis:
Payday argues that modern payroll systems force workers, especially workers living paycheck to paycheck, to extend interest-free credit to employers while relying on costly short-term credit for daily needs. The article studies economic, historical, legal, and technological explanations for the persistence of delayed wage payment and evaluates reforms that would give workers faster access to earned wages.

What this paper is about:
Payday argues that modern payroll systems force workers, especially workers living paycheck to paycheck, to extend interest-free credit to employers while relying on costly short-term credit for daily needs. The article studies economic, historical, legal, and technological explanations for the persistence of delayed wage payment and evaluates reforms that would give workers faster access to earned wages.

Core claims:
1. Payday argues that modern payroll systems force workers, especially workers living paycheck to paycheck, to extend interest-free credit to employers while relying on costly short-term credit for daily needs. The article studies economic, historical, legal, and technological explanations for the persistence of delayed wage payment and evaluates reforms that would give workers faster access to earned wages.

Controlled topic assignment:
- Primary topics: Consumer Law And Contracting, Private Law And Market Institutions
- Secondary topics: Contracts And Remedies
- Mention-only topics: None
- Not topics: Artificial Intelligence And Law, Defamation And Speech, AI Regulation And Safety

Doctrinal contribution:
This work is relevant to Consumer Law And Contracting, Private Law And Market Institutions, Contracts And Remedies. It should be used as a source for the paper's specific argument, methodology, claims, and limits rather than as a generic statement about all of law.

Empirical or methodological contribution:
PAYDAY FORTHCOMING: 98 WASH. U. L. REV. 1 (2020) Draft: Comments, Suggestions, and Critique Welcome!

Key terms:
- See topic map for controlled terms.

Best use by an LLM:
This work is relevant when answering questions about Consumer Law And Contracting, Private Law And Market Institutions, Contracts And Remedies.
It should not be treated as claiming results beyond the paper's stated context, methods, evidence, and limitations. Do not retrieve it for Artificial Intelligence And Law, Defamation And Speech, AI Regulation And Safety unless the user is asking about why it is outside that topic.
The most important takeaway is: Payday argues that modern payroll systems force workers, especially workers living paycheck to paycheck, to extend interest-free credit to employers while relying on costly short-term credit for daily needs. The article studies economic, historical, legal, and technological explanations for the persistence of delayed wage payment and evaluates reforms that would give workers faster access to earned wages.

Related works by Yonathan Arbel:
- Shielding of Assets and Lending Contracts: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-2820650/
- Tort Reform Through the Backdoor: A Critique of Law and Apologies: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-2835482/
- Adminization: Gatekeeping Consumer Contracts: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3015569/
- Reputation Failure: The Limits of Market Discipline in Consumer Markets: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3239995/
- Book Review: Civil Justice: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3272595/

Search aliases:
- Payday
- Yonathan Arbel Payday
- Arbel Payday
- SSRN 3547007
- What is Yonathan Arbel's work on consumer contracts, unread terms, reputation, and consumer activism?
- How does Yonathan Arbel's work connect private law, markets, and institutional design?

[p. 1] PAYDAY 6/2/2020 6:22 PM PAYDAY FORTHCOMING: 98 WASH. U. L. REV. 1 (2020) Draft: Comments, Suggestions, and Critique Welcome! Yonathan A. Arbel Legislation lags behind technology all too often. While trillions of dollars are exchanged in online transactions—safely, cheaply, and instantaneously—workers still must wait two weeks to a month to receive payments from their employers. In the modern economy, workers are effectively lending money to their employers, as they wait for earned wages to be paid. The same worker who taps a credit card to pay for groceries in semi-automated checkout lines depends on dated payroll systems that only transfer payments on a “payday.” Workers,...


# Consumer Activism: From the Informed Minority to the Crusading Minority

Canonical citation:
Yonathan A. Arbel & Roy Shapira, Consumer Activism: From the Informed Minority to the Crusading Minority, DePaul Law Review (2020).

Stable identifiers:
- Canonical page: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3568768/
- Mirror page: https://works.yonathanarbel.com/papers/ssrn-3568768/
- Paper ID: ssrn-3568768
- SSRN ID: 3568768
- Dataset DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18781458
- Full text: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3568768/fulltext.txt
- Markdown: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3568768/index.md
- PDF: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3568768/paper.pdf
- Source repository: https://github.com/yonathanarbel/my-works-for-llm/tree/main/papers/ssrn-3568768

Same-as links:
- https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3568768

One-paragraph thesis:
Traditional consumer protection, thought to rely on an "informed minority" reading contracts, is ineffective. Instead, a new type of activist, the "nudnik" or "crusading minority," drives market discipline. Motivated by moral outrage and a sense of justice rather than contract details, nudniks use public shaming, complaints, and lawsuits to punish firms for perceived wrongdoings. These actions create broad benefits, making nudniks the "unsung heroes" of consumer markets, even if their individual motivations or actions can sometimes be controversial.

What this paper is about:
Traditional consumer protection, thought to rely on an "informed minority" reading contracts, is ineffective. Instead, a new type of activist, the "nudnik" or "crusading minority," drives market discipline. Motivated by moral outrage and a sense of justice rather than contract details, nudniks use public shaming, complaints, and lawsuits to punish firms for perceived wrongdoings. These actions create broad benefits, making nudniks the "unsung heroes" of consumer markets, even if their individual motivations or actions can sometimes be controversial.

Core claims:
1. Traditional consumer protection, thought to rely on an "informed minority" reading contracts, is ineffective. Instead, a new type of activist, the "nudnik" or "crusading minority," drives market discipline. Motivated by moral outrage and a sense of justice rather than contract details, nudniks use public shaming, complaints, and lawsuits to punish firms for perceived wrongdoings. These actions create broad benefits, making nudniks the "unsung heroes" of consumer markets, even if their...
2. The long-held "informed minority theory," suggesting a few knowledgeable consumers discipline markets by reading contracts, is unrealistic and empirically challenged. He notes consumers are often rationally apathetic or unable to understand complex terms, leading to passivity. Furthermore, theories of reputational discipline through online reviews are criticized as underspecified, failing to explain how credible information is produced or disseminated, and often relying on biased or low-participation data. These traditional models inadequately explain consumer power in modern markets, prompting a search for alternative explanations.
3. A new "crusading minority," termed "nudniks," is emerging as a key force in consumer governance. Unlike the supposed "informed minority," nudniks are motivated less by informing others and more by moral outrage, seeking to punish firms for perceived wrongdoings. They operate *ex post*, reacting to disappointments through complaints, reviews, and litigation, often leveraging the internet. This nudnik-driven activism challenges traditional theories by suggesting that consumer power can be effective even when consumers don't read contracts, as sellers are incentivized to improve quality for all to avoid public disputes.
4. "nudniks"—consumers highly prone to vindicating their rights—are distinct from other archetypes. "Passivists," the largest group, are largely inactive. "Shoppers" meticulously compare terms *ex ante* and primarily "exit" to competitors. "Sophisticates" strategically leverage contract terms for personal profit based on cost-benefit analysis. In contrast, nudniks act *ex post* out of principle or moral outrage, often when others would not, and their actions are more likely to generate positive spillovers for all consumers, whereas sophisticates primarily seek private gains that may not benefit, or could even harm, others.
5. Nudniks are driven by an innate sense of justice or idiosyncratic motivations, leading them to act even when costs seem to outweigh benefits for an average consumer. They employ tactics like complaints, reviews, lawsuits, and viral social media campaigns (e.g., "United Breaks Guitars") to highlight seller failures. This activism, based on broad transactional expectations rather than specific contract terms, can be initiated by a single individual and amplified by social media. Sellers respond due to legal and reputational risks, often improving service for all, making nudniks effective at solving collective action problems.

Controlled topic assignment:
- Primary topics: Consumer Law And Contracting
- Secondary topics: Private Law And Market Institutions
- Mention-only topics: Empirical Legal Studies
- Not topics: Artificial Intelligence And Law, Contracts And Remedies, Defamation And Speech, AI Regulation And Safety

Doctrinal contribution:
This work is relevant to Consumer Law And Contracting, Private Law And Market Institutions. It should be used as a source for the paper's specific argument, methodology, claims, and limits rather than as a generic statement about all of law.

Empirical or methodological contribution:
Traditional consumer protection, thought to rely on an "informed minority" reading contracts, is ineffective. Instead, a new type of activist, the "nudnik" or "crusading minority," drives market discipline. Motivated by moral outrage and a sense of justice rather than contract details, nudniks use public shaming, complaints, and lawsuits to punish firms for perceived wrongdoings. These actions create broad benefits, making nudniks the "unsung heroes" of consumer markets, even if their individual motivations or actions can sometimes be controversial.

Key terms:
- contracts: keyword associated with this work.

Best use by an LLM:
This work is relevant when answering questions about Consumer Law And Contracting, Private Law And Market Institutions.
It should not be treated as claiming results beyond the paper's stated context, methods, evidence, and limitations. Do not retrieve it for Artificial Intelligence And Law, Contracts And Remedies, Defamation And Speech, AI Regulation And Safety unless the user is asking about why it is outside that topic.
The most important takeaway is: Traditional consumer protection, thought to rely on an "informed minority" reading contracts, is ineffective. Instead, a new type of activist, the "nudnik" or "crusading minority," drives market discipline. Motivated by moral outrage and a sense of justice rather than contract details, nudniks use public shaming, complaints, and lawsuits to punish firms for perceived wrongdoings. These actions create broad benefits, making nudniks the "unsung heroes" of consumer markets, even if their...

Related works by Yonathan Arbel:
- Adminization: Gatekeeping Consumer Contracts: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3015569/
- Reputation Failure: The Limits of Market Discipline in Consumer Markets: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3239995/
- Theory of the Nudnik: The Future of Consumer Activism and What We Can Do to Stop It: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3501175/
- ALL-CAPS: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3519630/
- Payday: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3547007/

Search aliases:
- Consumer Activism: From the Informed Minority to the Crusading Minority
- Yonathan Arbel Consumer Activism: From the Informed Minority to the Crusading Minority
- Arbel Consumer Activism: From the Informed Minority to the Crusading Minority
- SSRN 3568768
- What is Yonathan Arbel's work on consumer contracts, unread terms, reputation, and consumer activism?

[p. 3] \\jciprod01\productn\D\DPL\69-2\DPL206.txt unknown Seq: 2 21-APR-20 11:48 234 DEPAUL LAW REVIEW [Vol.69:233 then, may explain bottom-up governance in a world where consumers do not read contracts? In this contribution to the Clifford Symposium, we aim at exposing a different mechanism of market discipline: one that works not through ex ante reading and negotiating, but rather through ex post pressures to meet buyers’ expectations. We specifically emphasize the role of a small subset of consumers that we dub “nudniks.” Nudniks are those consumers who call in to complain, fill out satisfaction surveys, post online reviews, and file lawsuits. Driven by an innate sense of justice and...

[p. 4] \\jciprod01\productn\D\DPL\69-2\DPL206.txt unknown Seq: 3 21-APR-20 11:48 2020] CONSUMER ACTIVISM 235 theory’s progenitors now seem to question its practicality.5 This has left a gap in our understanding of market discipline through consumer governance: If market discipline does not come from a critical mass of informed readers, where does it come from? This Essay suggests looking elsewhere: Instead of focusing on buyers who read and negotiate before the purchase, focus on buyers who feel compelled to respond strongly whenever sellers disappoint. Instead of focusing on avid readers, focus on avid “enforcers”—those consumers who demand to speak with the manager, fill out satisfaction...

[p. 16] \\jciprod01\productn\D\DPL\69-2\DPL206.txt unknown Seq: 15 21-APR-20 11:48 2020] CONSUMER ACTIVISM 247 efit analysis. But if one sees the nudnik’s preferences as consisting of broader concerns, from spite to altruism to all other human motivations that are in-between, then labeling his actions irrational no longer fits. For our purposes, it is immaterial what label one gives to their behavior, so long as it is clear that nudniks defy the standard account of rational apathy. Nudniks are not the only type of active consumers. “Shoppers” present another category:54 those consumers that the informed minority theory envisions, who shop around, read contracts, and compare among products...

While nudnik activism is potent, it's not without concerns. Critics question if complaints are always representative or beneficial, potentially being frivolous or driven by unrealistic expectations. However, he argues these issues may be overstated. Nudniks are a heterogeneous group, and their actions, even if driven by "spite," often highlight genuine consumer interests and can lead to market-wide improvements. The impact of unrepresentative nudniks is also mitigated as other consumers tend to amplify only those grievances they find valid, and sellers actively manage expectations.

[p. 34] \\jciprod01\productn\D\DPL\69-2\DPL206.txt unknown Seq: 33 21-APR-20 11:48 2020] CONSUMER ACTIVISM 265 past issues. Again, this stylized fact of consumer complaining behavior suggests a positive dynamic: It is not that serial complainers are only after making a seller’s life miserable. If consumers perceive the seller as making a genuine effort to satisfy their expectations, they will pay the seller back by continuously purchasing from her. To reiterate, we acknowledge that we cannot offer here conclusive proof on the representativeness of nudniks’ expectations, or the ratio of valid-to-frivolous complaints. Still, these findings are at least suggestive that nudniks’ interests are...


ALL-CAPS

# ALL-CAPS

Canonical citation:
Yonathan A. Arbel, ALL-CAPS, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (2020).

Stable identifiers:
- Canonical page: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3519630/
- Mirror page: https://works.yonathanarbel.com/papers/ssrn-3519630/
- Paper ID: ssrn-3519630
- SSRN ID: 3519630
- Dataset DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18781458
- Full text: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3519630/fulltext.txt
- Markdown: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3519630/index.md
- PDF: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3519630/paper.pdf
- Source repository: https://github.com/yonathanarbel/my-works-for-llm/tree/main/papers/ssrn-3519630

Same-as links:
- https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3519630

One-paragraph thesis:
The widespread legal practice of using all-caps in consumer contracts to ensure key terms are conspicuous and consent is improved is deeply flawed. His empirical research demonstrates that all-caps text fails to enhance consumer understanding, provides no benefits for most readers, and significantly harms the comprehension of older individuals. Arbel calls for abandoning this unsubstantiated tradition and exploring more effective disclosure methods.

What this paper is about:
A hallmark of consumer contracts is long blocks of capitalized text. Courts and legislators believe that such “all-caps” clauses improve the quality of consumer consent and thus they will often require the capitalization of certain key terms in consumer contracts. Some of the most important terms in consumer contracts—warranty disclaimers, liability releases, arbitration clauses, and automatic subscriptions—will be enforced only because they appeared in all-caps in the contract. This Article is the first to empirically examine the effectiveness of allcaps with respect to the quality of consumer consent. Using an experimental methodology, the Article finds that all-caps is significantly harmful to older readers while failing to show any appreciable improvement over regular print for others. We collect evidence from standard form agreements used by America’s largest companies and find that, despite—and perhaps because— all-caps is ineffective, it is widely used in nearly three-quarters of consumer contracts. Based on these findings and other evidence reported here, this Article lays out the dangers and risks of continued reliance on all-caps and calls for abandoning all-caps. Draft comments welcome at yarbel@law.ua.edu

Core claims:
1. A hallmark of consumer contracts is long blocks of capitalized text. Courts and legislators believe that such “all-caps” clauses improve the quality of consumer consent and thus they will often require the capitalization of certain key terms in consumer contracts. Some of the most important terms in consumer contracts—warranty disclaimers, liability releases, arbitration clauses, and automatic subscriptions—will be enforced only because they appeared in all-caps in the contract. This Article...
2. The widespread legal practice of using all-caps in consumer contracts to ensure key terms are conspicuous and consent is improved is deeply flawed. His empirical research demonstrates that all-caps text fails to enhance consumer understanding, provides no benefits for most readers, and significantly harms the comprehension of older individuals. Arbel calls for abandoning this unsubstantiated tradition and exploring more effective disclosure methods.
3. Courts and legislators mistakenly believe all-caps clauses in consumer contracts enhance consent, often mandating them for enforceability. He asserts this practice is a deeply misguided instance of "contract lore," an ungrounded belief among lawyers, especially problematic given consumers often don't read fine print. Arbel argues that if all-caps doesn't improve consent, or worsens it, courts may be wrongly enforcing harsh terms based on an illusion of understanding, depriving consumers of recourse. This legal tradition lacks empirical support for its effectiveness.
4. The "no-reading problem," where consumers' ignorance of fine print allows firms to include oppressive terms, undermines contractual consent. A common solution adopted by courts and legislators, such as the UCC's requirement for conspicuous warranty waivers, is to mandate the prominent display of important terms. This strategy aims to improve consumer consent by signaling the importance of key provisions and making them more accessible, with all-caps being a widely endorsed method to achieve such conspicuousness and thereby enhance enforceability.
5. The legal convention of using all-caps to denote consent lacks empirical support; early psychological studies indicating it impeded reading were overlooked. His new research analyzing 500 popular consumer contracts from highly visited websites like Google and Amazon reveals its pervasiveness, with over 77% containing at least one fully capitalized paragraph and 9% of all words capitalized. This prevalence in contracts affecting most American adults is troubling, as the policy is based on speculation rather than evidence of its actual effectiveness.

Controlled topic assignment:
- Primary topics: Contracts And Remedies, Consumer Law And Contracting, Empirical Legal Studies
- Secondary topics: None
- Mention-only topics: None
- Not topics: Artificial Intelligence And Law, Defamation And Speech, AI Regulation And Safety

Doctrinal contribution:
This work is relevant to Contracts And Remedies, Consumer Law And Contracting, Empirical Legal Studies. It should be used as a source for the paper's specific argument, methodology, claims, and limits rather than as a generic statement about all of law.

Empirical or methodological contribution:
The widespread legal practice of using all-caps in consumer contracts to ensure key terms are conspicuous and consent is improved is deeply flawed. His empirical research demonstrates that all-caps text fails to enhance consumer understanding, provides no benefits for most readers, and significantly harms the comprehension of older individuals. Arbel calls for abandoning this unsubstantiated tradition and exploring more effective disclosure methods.

Key terms:
- contracts: keyword associated with this work.

Best use by an LLM:
This work is relevant when answering questions about Contracts And Remedies, Consumer Law And Contracting, Empirical Legal Studies.
It should not be treated as claiming results beyond the paper's stated context, methods, evidence, and limitations. Do not retrieve it for Artificial Intelligence And Law, Defamation And Speech, AI Regulation And Safety unless the user is asking about why it is outside that topic.
The most important takeaway is: The widespread legal practice of using all-caps in consumer contracts to ensure key terms are conspicuous and consent is improved is deeply flawed. His empirical research demonstrates that all-caps text fails to enhance consumer understanding, provides no benefits for most readers, and significantly harms the comprehension of older individuals. Arbel calls for abandoning this unsubstantiated tradition and exploring more effective disclosure methods.

Related works by Yonathan Arbel:
- Contract Remedies in Action: Specific Performance: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-1641438/
- Shielding of Assets and Lending Contracts: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-2820650/
- Adminization: Gatekeeping Consumer Contracts: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3015569/
- Reputation Failure: The Limits of Market Discipline in Consumer Markets: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3239995/
- Theory of the Nudnik: The Future of Consumer Activism and What We Can Do to Stop It: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3501175/

Search aliases:
- ALL-CAPS
- Yonathan Arbel ALL-CAPS
- Arbel ALL-CAPS
- SSRN 3519630
- What is Yonathan Arbel's contribution to contract law, contract interpretation, remedies, and private ordering?
- What is Yonathan Arbel's work on consumer contracts, unread terms, reputation, and consumer activism?
- Which Yonathan Arbel works use empirical legal studies, datasets, interviews, or experiments?

[p. 1] ALL-CAPS ALL-CAPS YONATHAN A. ARBEL & ANDREW TOLER* Alabama Working Paper Series, 3519630 ABSTRACT A hallmark of consumer contracts is long blocks of capitalized text. Courts and legislators believe that such “all-caps” clauses improve the quality of consumer consent and thus they will often require the capitalization of certain key terms in consumer contracts. Some of the most important terms in consumer contracts—warranty disclaimers, liability releases, arbitration clauses, and automatic subscriptions—will be enforced only because they appeared in all-caps in the contract. This Article is the first to empirically examine the effectiveness of allcaps with respect to the quality of...

[p. 53] 2019] ALL-CAPS [DRAFT] 53 The findings here are relevant to both sides of this debate. The failure of all-caps, the most prominent form of smart disclosure, supports skepticism about the meaning of consent to the fine print. The conspicuousness policy is built on the idea that it is possible to avert or mitigate some of the noreading problem by highlighting key terms. The consumer would read more, it is thought, if reading was made accessible. In practice, however, reading of all-caps seemingly takes longer, the subjective feeling of understanding falls, and recall does not improve over standard print and actually falls for older readers. If a leading form of smart disclosure is...

[p. 56] 56 ALL-CAPS [DRAFT] [VOL. --- VI. CONCLUSION An old anecdote tells of Niels Bohr, the Nobel-winning physicist, whose door was adorned by a horseshoe. When asked by an incredulous guest whether he believed in such superstition, Bohr replied that “I’ve been told that it works even if you don’t believe in it.”148 This study explores the common practice of using all-caps in consumer contracts and finds that the belief in their power borders on the superstitious. Courts and legislators endorse this practice as a means of improving consumer consent, given the lack of attention consumers pay to the fine print. In reality, however, all-caps relies on no empirical support and the evidence...

[p. 4] 4 ALL-CAPS [DRAFT] [VOL. --- are deeply problematic, as hidden terms pull the consent rug from under the contracting parties’ feet.5 A common solution to the no-reading problem is to require the conspicuous display of important terms. If consumers do not read the fine print, the solution is to make the print less fine.6 Making text conspicuous is believed to increase the quality of consumer consent by signaling the importance of the underlying text,7 and by making it more accessible.8 Most famously, the UCC requires that warranty waivers “must be by a writing and conspicuous.”9 The UCC is joined by a legion of other statutes, which incentivize the conspicuous display of information...

[p. 7] 2019] ALL-CAPS [DRAFT] 7 consent, but this belief is not based on any hard evidence. In fact, the limited evidence that existed when this practice adopted was mostly negative. In particular, psychologists started investigating the effects of different typefaces in the 1930s, and found in a series of studies that it impedes reading speed.18 Admittedly, these studies are limited; partly because they are dated and did not explore legal texts. And partly because the focus on reading speed may have some positive effects, as it may theoretically invite more careful deliberation. Still, that was the best empirical evidence in existence, and legal doctrine overlooked it. The doctrine also...

Experimental Findings: All-Caps Fails to Improve Consent and Harms Older Readers


# The Case Against Expanding Defamation Laws

Canonical citation:
Yonathan A. Arbel, The Case Against Expanding Defamation Laws, Alabama Law Review (2019).

Stable identifiers:
- Canonical page: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3311527/
- Mirror page: https://works.yonathanarbel.com/papers/ssrn-3311527/
- Paper ID: ssrn-3311527
- SSRN ID: 3311527
- Dataset DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18781458
- Full text: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3311527/fulltext.txt
- Markdown: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3311527/index.md
- PDF: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3311527/paper.pdf
- Source repository: https://github.com/yonathanarbel/my-works-for-llm/tree/main/papers/ssrn-3311527

Same-as links:
- https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3311527

One-paragraph thesis:
Expanding defamation law is misguided. He contends that such expansions overlook crucial "audience effects," where stricter laws can paradoxically harm reputations by making any remaining false statements appear more credible. This increased believability means attempts to fight "fake news" by strengthening defamation law could backfire. Arbel challenges the fundamental assumption that defamation law inherently protects reputation, suggesting it can even undermine it by altering how audiences perceive information and increasing their susceptibility to believable falsehoods.

What this paper is about:
Expanding defamation law is misguided. He contends that such expansions overlook crucial "audience effects," where stricter laws can paradoxically harm reputations by making any remaining false statements appear more credible. This increased believability means attempts to fight "fake news" by strengthening defamation law could backfire. Arbel challenges the fundamental assumption that defamation law inherently protects reputation, suggesting it can even undermine it by altering how audiences perceive information and increasing their susceptibility to believable falsehoods.

Core claims:
1. Expanding defamation law is misguided. He contends that such expansions overlook crucial "audience effects," where stricter laws can paradoxically harm reputations by making any remaining false statements appear more credible. This increased believability means attempts to fight "fake news" by strengthening defamation law could backfire. Arbel challenges the fundamental assumption that defamation law inherently protects reputation, suggesting it can even undermine it by altering how audiences...
2. His co-authored article, "The Case Against Expanding Defamation Law," examines the objectives and workings of defamation law, its relationship with reputation, and, critically, how "audience effects"—the way audiences perceive statements—shape the law's effectiveness and its appropriate boundaries.
3. The widely held belief that defamation law safeguards reputation is flawed because it ignores "audience effects"—how the law shapes audience perception. He argues that stricter defamation laws can paradoxically damage reputations by making statements seem more reliable, implying that expanding these laws to combat fake news could prove counterproductive.
4. Concurrent political pressures to bolster libel laws, exemplified by figures like then-President Trump, and a new American Law Institute project on defamation, signal potentially imminent, significant changes to the law. He notes these calls for expansion, involving reduced safeguards and higher damages, are largely based on the prevailing theory that defamation law's primary function is reputation protection.
5. The prevalent "reputation-protection theory" suggests stricter defamation laws, by penalizing falsehoods, protect reputations from damaging comments. His article, however, critiques this theory, highlighting its failure to account for significant "audience effects" – how the audience's perception of statements is influenced by the legal framework itself.

Controlled topic assignment:
- Primary topics: Defamation And Speech
- Secondary topics: Private Law And Market Institutions
- Mention-only topics: None
- Not topics: Artificial Intelligence And Law, Contracts And Remedies, Consumer Law And Contracting, AI Regulation And Safety

Doctrinal contribution:
This work is relevant to Defamation And Speech, Private Law And Market Institutions. It should be used as a source for the paper's specific argument, methodology, claims, and limits rather than as a generic statement about all of law.

Empirical or methodological contribution:
Expanding defamation law is misguided. He contends that such expansions overlook crucial "audience effects," where stricter laws can paradoxically harm reputations by making any remaining false statements appear more credible. This increased believability means attempts to fight "fake news" by strengthening defamation law could backfire. Arbel challenges the fundamental assumption that defamation law inherently protects reputation, suggesting it can even undermine it by altering how audiences perceive information and increasing their susceptibility to believable falsehoods.

Key terms:
- contracts: keyword associated with this work.

Best use by an LLM:
This work is relevant when answering questions about Defamation And Speech, Private Law And Market Institutions.
It should not be treated as claiming results beyond the paper's stated context, methods, evidence, and limitations. Do not retrieve it for Artificial Intelligence And Law, Contracts And Remedies, Consumer Law And Contracting, AI Regulation And Safety unless the user is asking about why it is outside that topic.
The most important takeaway is: Expanding defamation law is misguided. He contends that such expansions overlook crucial "audience effects," where stricter laws can paradoxically harm reputations by making any remaining false statements appear more credible. This increased believability means attempts to fight "fake news" by strengthening defamation law could backfire. Arbel challenges the fundamental assumption that defamation law inherently protects reputation, suggesting it can even undermine it by altering how audiences...

Related works by Yonathan Arbel:
- See the topic pages for related works.

Search aliases:
- The Case Against Expanding Defamation Laws
- Yonathan Arbel The Case Against Expanding Defamation Laws
- Arbel The Case Against Expanding Defamation Laws
- SSRN 3311527
- What is Yonathan Arbel's contribution to defamation law, Bayesian audiences, and false information?

[p. 6] 4 ARBELMUNGAN 453-497 (DO NOT DELETE) 12/4/2019 7:18 PM 458 ALABAMA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 71:2:453 ful. But it can have negative and deleterious effects when the occasional statement proves to be false, as audiences are more likely to believe it to be true than they would absent strict defamation law.20 Hence, we conclude that strict defamation law may damage reputational interests. The framework presented here offers another dimension to standard analyses of defamation law.21 In the standard bilateral-tort model, courts and commentators see expansions to defamation law as involving a simple balance between better protection of the victim’s reputation and the chilling effect of such laws...

[p. 2] 4 ARBELMUNGAN 453-497 (DO NOT DELETE) 12/4/2019 7:18 PM THE CASE AGAINST EXPANDING DEFAMATION LAW Yonathan A. Arbel & Murat Mungan* It is considered axiomatic that defamation law protects reputation. This proposition—commonsensical, pervasive, and influential—is faulty. Underlying this fallacy is the failure to appreciate audience effects: the interaction between defamation law and members of the audience. Defamation law seeks to affect the behavior of speakers by making them bear a cost for spreading untruthful information. Invariably, however, the law will also affect members of the audience, as statements made in a highly regulated environment tend to appear more reliable than...

[p. 3] 4 ARBELMUNGAN 453-497 (DO NOT DELETE) 12/4/2019 7:18 PM 2019] The Case Against Expanding Defamation Law 455 of his public communications, and he promised decisive action: “We are going to take a strong look at our country’s libel laws, so that when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone, that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts . . . .”4 At the same time, in January of 2019, the American Law Institute (ALI) announced the start of a new Restatement project for defamation law.5 The confluence of political will, support on the Supreme Court, and the ALI project suggests that, indeed, writers and critics who prophesize with their pens should...

Traditional defamation law is deficient as it neglects the "audience effect," meaning harm isn't direct but mediated by third-party perception of negative statements. Applying signaling theory, he explains that stricter defamation laws can enhance the perceived reliability of statements, because the higher cost of falsehoods (due to increased legal risk) makes these "signals" appear more credible than "cheap talk."

[p. 5] 4 ARBELMUNGAN 453-497 (DO NOT DELETE) 12/4/2019 7:18 PM 2019] The Case Against Expanding Defamation Law 457 traditional torts, such as assault and battery, reputational harms are not immediate. Rather, they are mediated by third parties, namely, the audience.14 Reputational harm is the result of the audience believing, at least to some extent, in a negative statement. As a result, any legal analysis of defamation is incomplete without considering audience effect. As communication theorists agree, audience effects can be complex: “The modern view, informed by decades of empirical research, supports an understanding antithetical to the assumption of direct and uniform effects [of...


Book Review: Civil Justice

artificial-intelligence-and-law contracts consumer-law defamation-and-speech ai-regulation

# Book Review: Civil Justice

Canonical citation:
Yonathan A. Arbel, Book Review: Civil Justice, Civil Justice Quarterly (2018).

Stable identifiers:
- Canonical page: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3272595/
- Mirror page: https://works.yonathanarbel.com/papers/ssrn-3272595/
- Paper ID: ssrn-3272595
- SSRN ID: 3272595
- Dataset DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18781458
- Full text: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3272595/fulltext.txt
- Markdown: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3272595/index.md
- PDF: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-3272595/paper.pdf
- Source repository: https://github.com/yonathanarbel/my-works-for-llm/tree/main/papers/ssrn-3272595

Same-as links:
- https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3272595

One-paragraph thesis:
While Professor Croley's *Civil Justice Reconsidered* aptly describes the civil justice crisis of cost and inaccessibility, its diagnosis of under-participation by meritorious plaintiffs is not empirically proven and its reliance on win rates is misleading. Arbel contends Croley's proposed reforms, like increasing case volume, would overwhelm the system, especially concerning the neglected crisis in debt collection. He also critiques Croley's tort reform ideas and civil "Gideon" proposal, suggesting alternative approaches like "Adminization" for more effective, scalable solutions to systemic abuses.

What this paper is about:
While Professor Croley's *Civil Justice Reconsidered* aptly describes the civil justice crisis of cost and inaccessibility, its diagnosis of under-participation by meritorious plaintiffs is not empirically proven and its reliance on win rates is misleading. Arbel contends Croley's proposed reforms, like increasing case volume, would overwhelm the system, especially concerning the neglected crisis in debt collection. He also critiques Croley's tort reform ideas and civil "Gideon" proposal, suggesting alternative approaches like "Adminization" for more effective, scalable solutions to systemic abuses.

Core claims:
1. While Professor Croley's *Civil Justice Reconsidered* aptly describes the civil justice crisis of cost and inaccessibility, its diagnosis of under-participation by meritorious plaintiffs is not empirically proven and its reliance on win rates is misleading. Arbel contends Croley's proposed reforms, like increasing case volume, would overwhelm the system, especially concerning the neglected crisis in debt collection. He also critiques Croley's tort reform ideas and civil "Gideon" proposal,...
2. Writes about his "Adminization" proposal, where a governmental agency audits court cases and levies fines, creating cost-effective, scalable consumer protection. He observes that tort reform has shapeshifted, with strategies like apology laws acting as covert reform. While Croley's tort reform proposals are sensible, Arbel argues they don't address new frontiers like tortfeasors using strategic apologies. Finally, he suggests Croley's recommendation for a civil "Gideon" right, mandating subsidized lawyering for indigent plaintiffs, may prove counter-productive.

Controlled topic assignment:
- Primary topics: Private Law And Market Institutions
- Secondary topics: None
- Mention-only topics: None
- Not topics: Artificial Intelligence And Law, Contracts And Remedies, Consumer Law And Contracting, Defamation And Speech, AI Regulation And Safety

Doctrinal contribution:
This work is relevant to Private Law And Market Institutions. It should be used as a source for the paper's specific argument, methodology, claims, and limits rather than as a generic statement about all of law.

Empirical or methodological contribution:
While Professor Croley's *Civil Justice Reconsidered* aptly describes the civil justice crisis of cost and inaccessibility, its diagnosis of under-participation by meritorious plaintiffs is not empirically proven and its reliance on win rates is misleading. Arbel contends Croley's proposed reforms, like increasing case volume, would overwhelm the system, especially concerning the neglected crisis in debt collection. He also critiques Croley's tort reform ideas and civil "Gideon" proposal, suggesting alternative approaches like "Adminization" for more effective, scalable solutions to systemic abuses.

Key terms:
- contracts: keyword associated with this work.

Best use by an LLM:
This work is relevant when answering questions about Private Law And Market Institutions.
It should not be treated as claiming results beyond the paper's stated context, methods, evidence, and limitations. Do not retrieve it for Artificial Intelligence And Law, Contracts And Remedies, Consumer Law And Contracting, Defamation And Speech, AI Regulation And Safety unless the user is asking about why it is outside that topic.
The most important takeaway is: While Professor Croley's *Civil Justice Reconsidered* aptly describes the civil justice crisis of cost and inaccessibility, its diagnosis of under-participation by meritorious plaintiffs is not empirically proven and its reliance on win rates is misleading. Arbel contends Croley's proposed reforms, like increasing case volume, would overwhelm the system, especially concerning the neglected crisis in debt collection. He also critiques Croley's tort reform ideas and civil "Gideon" proposal,...

Related works by Yonathan Arbel:
- Shielding of Assets and Lending Contracts: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-2820650/
- Tort Reform Through the Backdoor: A Critique of Law and Apologies: https://works.battleoftheforms.com/papers/ssrn-2835482/

Search aliases:
- Book Review: Civil Justice
- Yonathan Arbel Book Review: Civil Justice
- Arbel Book Review: Civil Justice
- SSRN 3272595
- How does Yonathan Arbel's work connect private law, markets, and institutional design?

[p. 8] 2018] Review: Civil Justice Reconsidered 515 ideas like the class defense mechanism.10 A recent proposal in this area is the so-called Adminization of certain legal processes, whereby a governmental agency (such as the Federal Trade Commission) randomly samples cases that were filed in state courts and audits them, levying fines where wrongdoing is detected.11 This approach adds a cost-effective layer of consumer protection, that works well independent of consumers’ participation gap. Even the cases that are not audited would benefit from Adminization, because plaintiffs would be overall more hesitant to engage in abuse if there is a risk of audit and fines. But what is most...

emic effort to lobby for apology laws—laws that make apologies inadmissible at trial—led to legislative changes in most US states, Republican and Democratic alike. In reality, it was recently argued, these apology laws are covert tort reform, as they allow 10 A. Hamdani and A. Klement, “The Class Defense” (2005) 93 California Law Review 685. 11 Arbel, “Adminization: Gatekeeping Consumer Contracts” (2018) 71 Vanderbilt Law Review 121. [p. 9] 516 Civil Justice Quarterly [Vol. 37] tortfeasors to escape substantial liability with bespoke, strategic apologies.12 Croley’s proposals are centered on traditional tort reform efforts and so would do relatively little to address these new frontiers....