Category: Uncategorized

In a recent appearance at Canisius College, Chief Justice John Roberts addressed two interesting questions from the floor.  One concerned the issue of televised oral arguments.  Roberts expressed concern about the hesitation some might feel when answering questions on camera for an invisible and potentially limitless audience.  The question here seems to be one that has troubled courts for some time: how much and what type of publicity is appropriate to an open court system?  The other–and the more well reported–question concerned end-user licensing agreements (EULAs) for software and web-based services.  Robert flatly admitted that he does not read the fine print, noting that the sheer amount of information contained in such agreements tends to defeat the purpose of disclosure.  He went on to say that “the legal system obviously is to blame,” and that he had no answer to the problem.  That the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court would simply click-through such agreements is but an extreme example of the problem that Yannis Bakos, Florencia Marotta-Wurgler, and David R. Trossen have already demonstrated in their excellent paper, “Does Anyone Read the Fine Print?“: that there are nowhere near enough term-conscious users to discipline companies who might employ unfavorable terms.  And as the write-up from TechDirt further notes, Roberts’ admission also casts doubt on the legal standing of such instances of mindless assent.