This chapter develops a general framework for understanding disclosure laws as a core regulatory instrument in the United States. It outlines the defining features that commonly characterize disclosure regimes, including mandatory disclosure duties, their timing within transactions, standardized formats, and legal requirements concerning clarity, conciseness, and visibility. The chapter then reviews the principal aims traditionally associated with disclosure-based regulation, including improving decision-making under conditions of information asymmetry, promoting market competition, facilitating political compromise, enhancing personal autonomy, and reducing regulatory costs. It also traces the historical movement away from the doctrine of caveat emptor toward legal regimes imposing affirmative disclosure obligations on sellers, highlighting the doctrinal and statutory developments that gave rise to modern disclosure law. Together, these discussions provide the conceptual and historical grounding for the chapters that follow, which examine how technology-based standards may be incorporated into the assessment of disclosure quality and the broader structure of disclosure regulation.