As ridiculous as it sounds, many journals, including Elsevier journals, require you to transfer copyright of your article to them. See http://cdn.elsevier.com/promis_misc/phcgj_copyright_form.pdf for one example.
If a contract does not involve an exchange of value between the parties, but instead appears to be a one-sided transfer, a judge might strike it down as unconscionable. If the contract were voided in this way, instead of breached, Elsevier would have to give back everything it got from the author. If you paid for it, even one penny, that sale is much easier to defend in court.
But they don't pay. They charge at both ends.
It's also null and void in my country (.cz), and probably in many other European countries.
For example: If I make a contract with another Australian (company, individual, whatever), no treaty has an effect on that contract unless legislation has been passed to enact that treaty. A judge may refer to the treaty if there is some ambiguity that requires his/her discretion, but the treaty itself is not legally binding.
Also, you say "The authors pay Elsevier to coordinate peer review and publish using their brand names. This necessarily includes granting a license to Elsevier to copy and distribute the author's work." Well, transfer of copyright by author could be seen as simply part of the payment to Elsevier to coordinate peer review and publish the article. Consideration need not be, and very frequently is not, in the form of money. In fact, even in contracts where one party provides consideration in the form of money, the other party usually provides its consideration by promising to perform a service, or to transfer goods other than money.
There is a doctrine wherein otherwise valid contracts can be voided because of "unconscionability". Although the term is thrown about a lot, contracts -- even very one-sided contracts -- are almost never voided for unconscionability. The whole idea of contracts is that two private parties agree to terms to apply between themselves. Courts are thus very hesitant to intrude, unless there is a specific legal reason to do so, not just a general charge of 'unconscionability'.
The "status" of publication has a demonstrable market value, so I'm not sure why we are debating this.
I know it sounds stupid, and it's a case of {pschopaths>incompetents>losers}, but in reality the author's "careers" and "reputations" are on the line. And the academics are in the Losers bucket here. The grant-writers and tenure comittees take the title of "incompetents". And yes, the Elseveiers very much psychopaths.
And if you also consider all the fake papers submitted as integrity checks on the system that got accepted, it looks as though it's high time for researchers, professional associations, and universities alike to forcibly cut out the middleman and abandon his tainted brands.
When copyright is transferred, the promise effectively becomes an enforceable obligation. Artists are (occasionally) able to wriggle out of contracts on the basis of the failure to publish within a particular timeframe, because popularity is arguably a function of the timely availability of new material.
All of this goes far beyond main theme of the thread, but I initially raised the point because there seemed to be some confusion on whether Elsevier could rightfully claim ownership of copyrights. . . .
Nearly all of them, in my experience.