Some federal legislation is unambiguously incomprehensible, even to the lawmakers sponsoring the bills. Yet this legislation passes through both houses of Congress anyway. Part of the reason involves the benefits of legislative incomprehensibility; if hardly anyone understands what a bill means or how it might work, the bill may actually be able to pass more easily since it is hard to identify substantive flaws. Party leaders who are under pressure to pass some legislation can strongarm rank-and-file members to toe the party line and vote in favor. This chapter identifies the significance of this incomprehensible law problem and closes by offering preliminary suggestions for reform.

Consumer protection law is notoriously imbalanced with respect to the superior ability of sellers to process information as compared to their customers. Yet despite the resulting comprehension asymmetries, the design of consumer contract law and disclosure requirements regularly fail to encourage sellers to communicate meaningfully with the target audience. This chapter explores how consumer protection law tacitly encourages incomprehensibility and proposes reforms which would provide increased incentives for meaningful communication between buyers and sellers.