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Doctrine

Unconscionability

Contract and Property Doctrine
Origin Developed through common law and equity, and codified in the United States in Uniform Commercial Code section 2-302.

Unconscionability is a doctrine of contract law under which a court may refuse to enforce a contract or a specific term because it is so extremely unjust, or so overwhelmingly one-sided in favor of the party with superior bargaining power, that enforcing it would offend good conscience. Courts generally assess both procedural unconscionability, unfairness in how the contract was negotiated, such as unequal bargaining power or hidden terms, and substantive unconscionability, unfairness in the actual terms themselves, asking whether the disadvantaged party had a genuine opportunity to understand and evaluate the bargain before agreeing to it. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Origin Period
Developed through common law and equity, and codified in the United States in Uniform Commercial Code section 2-302. 1
Core Principle
A court will not enforce contract terms that are so extremely unjust or overwhelmingly one-sided in favor of the party with superior bargaining power that they are contrary to good conscience. 1
Origin Period
Origin Period (category)
20th Century (1900-1999) 1
Classification
Doctrine Category
Contract Law 1
Connections

Formulated By

In Area Of Law

Entity-backed identity for the doctrine category value this doctrine already carries as an enum fact, resolved to a doctrine entity by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The enum fact itself stays on the entity unchanged.

In Legal System

Source Unconscionability (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. Unconscionability (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia
  • Definition section
    Terms that are so extremely unjust, or overwhelmingly one-sided in favor of the party who has the superior bargaining power, that they are contrary to good conscience.
  • a doctrine in contract law that describes terms that are so extremely unjust... contrary to good conscience
  • In Legal System: Common Law
  • In Group: Contract Unconscionability and Unfair Bargain Doctrines, terms that are so extremely unjust, or overwhelmingly one-sided in favor of the party who has the superior bargaining power
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