Recently, the New York Times published a fascinating three-part series of articles on arbitration clauses, and how such clauses "buried in tens of millions of contracts have deprived Americans of one of their most fundamental constitutional rights: their day in court." (You can also listen to an interview with the articles' author on NPR.)
The articles deal mainly with consumer and employment contracts, in which, according to the Times, arbitration clauses have created "an alternate system of justice" where "rules tend to favor businesses, and judges and juries have been replaced by arbitrators who commonly consider the companies their clients." But arbitration clauses are increasingly common in publishing contracts, too--as well as in the Terms of Use of some major self-publishing platforms. And most authors don't understand their implications.
Here's one example, drawn from a contract I saw recently:
