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Part I - The Concept

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 June 2019

Wendy Wagner  and
Will Walker
Wendy Wagner
Affiliation:
University of Texas School of Law
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Summary

Nobel prize-winning economist Herbert Simon warned more than 70 years ago that if we did not find a way to manage the flood of information that threatens to overwhelm us, we would find ourselves unable to make sense of it. This short introductory chapter explores the various ways that legal architects have failed to heed Simon's warning in legal areas as diverse as consumer protection, financial regulation, patents, chemical control, and administrative and legislative process. A number of significant legal programs in the U.S. are designed to facilitate the sharing of complete information, yet these programs often neglect to ensure that the information is also comprehensible to the target audience.

Keywords

incomprehensibleasymmetric informationcommunicationinstitutional designlegal reformincentivestransparencyHerbert Simoncommunicationaudiencespeakercomprehension asymmetryinformation theoryeconomics of informationprocessing costinformation overloadincentivessearch enginesRule-benderRule-followerdatabombcomplexifyobfuscatedeliberate ambiguityinformation overloadprocessing costlegal designincentives
Type
Chapter
Information
Incomprehensible!
A Study of How our Legal System Encourages Incomprehensibility, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do About It
 , pp. 1 - 44
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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