Category Archives: Consumer Law
Dagan, Gergen and Heller, ‘Liberal Consumer Contract Law’
ABSTRACT The point of consumer contract law is to ensure most of life remains legally boring. This law succeeds when we can enjoy a cup of coffee or secure a mortgage without focusing on any of the contracting tasks. By protecting our time and attention, the law turns both mundane and constitutive consumer transactions into […]
Jose Sahian, ‘Vulnerability in the Microsystem of Consumer Law’
ABSTRACT The paper examines the centrality of vulnerability in the microsystem of protection of consumers and users, understood as a legal category that articulates equality, equity and dignity. This sector of private law has become the most dynamic space for the protection of people in structurally disadvantaged situations, by explicitly recognizing the inherent power asymmetries […]
Anya Prince, ‘Genes For Sale!’
ABSTRACT In March 2025, 23andMe, the flagship direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing company, filed for bankruptcy. Just like that, the genetic information of 15 million customers was up for sale to the highest bidder, creating a firestorm of reactions from the public, media, state attorneys general, and legislators warning of the dire outcomes that could arise […]
‘Let’s Focus on Property Managers Rather than the Form of Ownership’
Anika Singh Lemar, ‘Slum Managers’, 57 Connecticut Law Review 1207 (2025). In her recent essay, ‘Slum Managers’, Professor Anika Singh Lemar interrogates the distinction between ownership and management of rental housing. Numerous legal commentators and legislators have focused on the harms associated with large commercial entities purchasing rental housing, and some have even proposed prohibiting […]
Thomas Margoni, ‘Music Metadata Governance: A Legal Perspective’
ABSTRACT The governance of music (meta)data, meaning the rules and institutions governing (meta)data access and transferability within the music sector, constitutes a significant yet under-explored facet of the music data lifecycle. This chapter delves into the legal framework applicable to music (meta)data, with a particular emphasis on European data law. The analysis reveals that three […]
Houba and Motchenkova, ‘Personalized pricing and consumer privacy’
ABSTRACT Advances in data collection enable firms to use consumer information for personalized pricing. In Clavorà Braulin’s (2023) symmetric two-dimensional model, this reduces prices and profits, while partial privacy yields the highest profits. Extending the model to asymmetric firms and vertically differentiated products, we show that these results are not robust under sizable asymmetries. Partial […]
McTigue and Slawe, ‘Private Power, Public Harm: The Coercive Dynamics of Mass Arbitration’
Arbitration plays a vital role in offering consumers and employees an efficient forum for resolving disputes, especially as courts face growing constraints. However, the rise of abusive mass arbitrations aimed at extracting settlements – regardless of whether the claims asserted have any merit—distorts this system, harming businesses, consumers, and employees alike … (more, download) Michael […]
Enrico Baffi, ‘Public Standard Contract as Benchmark and Informed Opt-Out’
ABSTRACT This article proposes a market design mechanism for standard contracts in relationhips between firms and consumers, based on the preparation, by a public authority, of a sectoral standard contract intended to serve as a benchmark. The standard is constructed in such a way as to maximize the expected surplus for the majority of consumers, […]
Dana Ondrejová, ‘Definition of a particularly vulnerable consumer under Directive 2005/29/EC on unfair commercial practices’
ABSTRACT Directive 2005/29/EC on unfair commercial practices establishes the normative benchmark of the ‘average consumer’ as the primary standard for assessing the legality of commercial conduct. However, Article 5(3) of the Directive introduces an important corrective mechanism by recognizing the category of the ‘particularly vulnerable consumer’, whose economic behavior may be disproportionately influenced by age, […]
Bianca Scraback, ‘The international element requirement for consumer contract jurisdiction in the Brussels Ia Regulation’
ABSTRACT Whether or not local jurisdiction in consumer contract cases is regulated in the EU by the Brussels Ia Regulation or domestic rules on jurisdiction hinges on the existence of a relevant international element. Even determining the relevance of international elements using a rules-based approach and despite two decisions of the CJEU, the paper argues […]