Monika Leszczyńska
Think Twice Before You Sign! An Experiment on a Cautionary Function of Contractual Formalities
Abstract
Legal scholarship has long maintained that contractual formalities, such as written signatures, serve a cautionary function by protecting individuals from entering into ill-considered agreements. With the rise of digital contracting, however, it remains unclear whether online forms of assent can fulfill this role. In an incentivized laboratory experiment, I compared four modes of contract conclusion: clicking “OK,” typing one’s name, entering a PIN code (analogous to a qualified e-signature), and handwritten signing. The study examined how these different forms of confirmation influence intertemporal choices between smaller-sooner and larger-later rewards. Specifically, I tested whether handwritten signatures promote greater patience, leading individuals to defer gratification in favor of larger future payoffs. The results show that participants were more impulsive when confirming by clicking “OK” or typing their name, compared to handwritten signing. By contrast, no significant differences emerged between handwritten signatures and entering a PIN code. These findings indicate that the most common digital confirmation methods do not replicate the cautionary effect of handwritten signatures, underscoring the need to develop alternative online mechanisms that could serve this function more effectively.
Tim Samples, Katherine Ireland, and Kaspar Beelen
Introducing a New Longitudinal Corpus of Digital Contracts, 1999-2005
Abstract
The terms of use (TOUs) of major digital platforms are among the most prolific contracts in human history, yet their evolution over time remains largely unexamined. Efforts to study change in digital contracts are hindered by their ephemeral nature and the scarcity of publicly available data. This paper introduces the Longitudinal Digital Terms Corpus (LDT Corpus), a curated and comprehensive time series of 861 TOUs for fifty prominent digital platforms from 1999 to 2025. We analyze the LDT Corpus with an interdisciplinary toolkit that combines corpus linguistics with recent advances in natural language processing. Our results show that digital TOUs are highly plastic: they change frequently and often extensively. While expanding substantially in length, TOUs maintain consistently high levels of linguistic complexity over time. We also highlight patterns of textual convergence among TOUs by corporate affiliation. By making the LDT Corpus and our code publicly available, we offer new tools and data for research on contract change.
Michael G. Pratt
Mapping the Objective Theory of Contract Formation
Abstract
The objective theory of contract formation is usually presented as straightforward: contractual intention is determined by outward manifestations rather than private mental states. Yet the doctrine is typically taught and discussed through a narrow class of “imputed intention” cases, where a party is held to a contract they did not subjectively intend. This paper argues that this familiar framing obscures the objective theory’s structure and scope.
To recover that structure, the paper develops a matrix that maps formation disputes across eight configurations defined by three variables: the speaker’s intention, the addressee’s belief about that intention, and the reasonableness of that belief from the addressee’s position. The matrix shows that objectivity is not exhausted by the familiar reasonable-mistake scenario. It supplies a general framework for analyzing formation across the full spectrum of alignment and misalignment between intention and uptake.
The paper argues that an offer is legally recognized if and only if the addressee believes an offer was intended, and they are reasonable in that belief. Belief is necessary; reasonableness is necessary; and together they are sufficient – even where actual intention is absent. The paper explains this structure by treating formation as a communicative act governed by norms of attribution. Contractual liability depends not on the fortuitous convergence of private mental states, but on whether one party’s conduct successfully manifested an intention to confer a power of acceptance in a way the other was entitled to understand.