Incomprehensible! A Study of How Our Legal System Encourages Incomprehensibility, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do About It

The legal system is awash with excessive and incomprehensible information. Yet many of us assume that the unrelenting torrent of information pouring into various legal programs is both inevitable and unstoppable. We have become complacent; but it does not have to be this way.

Incomprehensible! argues that surrendering to incomprehensibility is a bad mistake. Drawing together evidence from diverse fields such as consumer protection, financial regulation, patents, chemical control, and administrative and legislative processes, this book identifies a number of important legal programs that are built on the foundational assumption that 'more information is better'.

Each of these legal processes have been designed in ways that ignore the imperative of meaningful communication. To rectify this systemic problem, the law must be re-designed to pay careful attention to the problem of incomprehensibility.

• Introduces the concept of 'comprehension asymmetries' as an important feature of legal design
• Identifies how law incentivizes incomprehensibility, even for well-meaning actors
• Provides a conceptual model for exploring comprehension asymmetries that transcends the six legal programs examined in the book