Category Archives: Consumer Law
Ludovico Bossi, ‘Volunteering for the Platforms. How the Fair Remuneration Principle of Authors and Performers May Be Violated by Social Media Terms of Service’
ABSTRACT While there is currently an intense discussion about the use of content posted by the users of social media to train Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) models, there is urgent need to reflect on the fair consideration of the interests of authors and performers, including their remuneration through digital media. Major social media terms of service […]
Abigail Faust, ‘A Theory Of Consumer Transactions’
ABSTRACT Even while developing proposals to reform consumer contract law, consumer contracts scholars rarely dispute the categorization of consumer transactions as ‘contracts.’ Yet consumer transactions – where sellers unilaterally draft terms that consumers rarely read or understand – clearly defy the traditional imagery of contracts as bilateral interactions between autonomous, roughly-equal parties. Indeed, it is […]
Christoph Busch, ‘Consumer Law for AI Agents’
ABSTRACT Since the public release of ChatGPT in November 2022, the AI landscape is undergoing a rapid transformation. Currently, the use of AI chatbots by consumers has largely been limited to image generation or question-answering language models. The next generation of AI systems, AI agents that can plan and execute complex tasks with only limited […]
Patricia McCoy, ‘Inflection Points In The Drafting Of The Restatement On Consumer Contracts: Salience And Its ARC’
ABSTRACT When the Reporters of the Restatement of the Law, Consumer Contracts (RCK or Restatement) undertook that project for the American Law Institute, they faced a bind. Courts generally infer blanket assent to boilerplate, contingent on proper notice. But the Reporters were previously on record as skeptical of notice because consumers almost never read boilerplate. […]
Kim and Leavitt, ‘Data Rights for Workers’
ABSTRACT Workers are subject to immense amounts of data collection on the job, and the algorithmic management tools built with that data can produce negative effects, including deskilling jobs, unstable work hours, reduced wages, and dangerous and degrading working conditions. Workers thus have significant interests how their data are collected and used, and yet they […]
Mateusz Grochowski, ‘Consumer Vulnerability: A Genealogy’
ABSTRACT Vulnerability has become a central concept in contemporary discussions on contract regulation and market oversight. In particular, it features prominently in the European Union’s digital market regulatory framework, where appeals to vulnerability frequently serve as justifications for intervention in horizontal market relationships. These arguments are typically grounded in the recognition that market actors are […]
Elizabeth Murphree, ‘Let the Sellers Beware: The Death of Caveat Emptor Could be Trending’
ABSTRACT The doctrine of caveat emptor is a remnant of Ancient Roman practices that still lingers in the practice of modern real estate law. However, a series of cases in the 1980s revealed the antiquated nature of such a doctrine by demonstrating that the doctrine no longer reflects societal needs. Specifically, caveat emptor does not […]
Liubomir Nikiforov, ‘Are We Forcing Companies to Be “Fair”?’
ABSTRACT Europe may soon experience a new wave of digital consumer protection regulation. One would be forgiven for rolling their eyes upon hearing the words ‘new EU digital regulation’. After all, in the past couple of years, Brussels has enacted a bulk of new digital measures,such as the Digital Services Act (DSA), the Digital Markets […]
‘Third party litigation funding and consumer redress’
The EU Commission has recently published a comprehensive Study on Mapping Third Party Litigation Funding in the European Union including all EU member states. Although the study covers all aspects of third party litigation funding, it is a potentially powerful tool for enforcing consumer rights, especially complex and costly collective redress actions … (more) [Andrea […]
David Hoffman, ‘Consumers’ Unreasonable Textual Expectations’
ABSTRACT The Restatement of Consumer Contracts, at § 4(d), states that ‘standard contract terms are interpreted in a manner that effectuates the reasonable expectations of the consumer’. As the Reporters note, this language derives from the Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 211, itself largely pulled from the insurance context. As § 211 was until recently […]