Scott Greenfield commenting on Prof. Margaret Jane Radin’s book “Boilerplate”. Radin has been a law professor for 37 years….

When it comes to lawyers, however, the right to opine crazy isn’t unlimited. Railing against the “tyranny” of small print is fine. We all hate it, and there are certainly substantial arguments to be made against click-wrap terms, which nobody reads, or the terms and conditions set forth inside packaging that no one sees until after a purchase is complete, the product opened and/or unreturnable.

But we do not have the right to conflate small print with corporations sucking away our constitutional rights or creating a new legal universe. That feeds the angst, the conspiracy theorists and the disenchanted, but it’s fundamentally wrong from a legal perspective, and there is simply no viable argument to support it. That’s where the line gets drawn.

Yet Radin wrote a book. Sullivan wrote about the book. And somewhere, sometime, someone may stumble across what they wrote and challenge it from centerfield at a Yankee game. And they will never make it to the seventh inning stretch. Small print may suck, but legally, its fine print unless the law otherwise prohibits it. You are not entitled to feel otherwise.

Small Print and Fine Print