Category Archives: Consumer Law
Gomez-Pomar and Beldowski, ‘Consumer Mortgage Loan Agreements in Foreign Currencies – Does One Solution Fit all?’
ABSTRACT Consumer protection in contracts concluded with credit institutions has received considerable attention from the national courts of various European countries in recent years. Unsurprisingly, the matter peaked after the wake of the global crisis of 2008 when consumers struggled with loan repayments in general. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has […]
Vittorio Bachelet, ‘“Pay-or-Consent” and Emerging Trends in Digital Contract Law’
ABSTRACT Pay-or-consent (‘Want to subscribe or continue using our Products for free with ads?’) is the dilemma facing Facebook and Instagram users since November 2023. This innovation primarily follows the Court of Justice’s strict interpretation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Meta v Bundeskartellamt, which ruled on several controversial issues of the data […]
Michele Ciancimino, ‘Private Law and Consumer Protection Paradigms facing (Digital) “Addictions”: A Starting Point for Reflection’
ABSTRACT The increasing area of addictive design of digital services, often related to the ‘gamification’, or ‘gamblification’, of services has given law scholars cause for reflection. How could private law and consumer protection tame addictions that are linked to contractual agreements? The essay aims to introduce this issue in order to start a debate on […]
‘Consumer Law and Inequality: Comparative Approaches to Consumer Vulnerability’
With the amount of exploitative digital tools explicitly targeting consumers’ vulnerabilities on the rise, it hardly seems controversial to call for greater protections. Whether consumer law should be concerned with inequality, however, is a multi-faceted question that depends to an extent on the particular vision and understanding of the aims of consumer law in play, […]
‘Reforming the Law relating to Contracts for the Sale of Goods and the Sale and Supply of Digital Content and Services: A Brexit Divide?’
This blog piece takes the theme of ‘Reforming the Law of Obligations and Judicial Activism’ and places it in the context of EU consumer contract law reforms. These have brought significant changes to the contract law of Member States, but obviously do not affect the law in non-Member States of which we must now include […]
Michele Gilman, ‘The Impact of Proptech and The Datafication of Real Estate on The Human Right To Housing’
ABSTRACT Proptech is undermining the human right to housing. Proptech is a term of art for the digital transformation of the real estate industry. It includes a range of real estate businesses engaged in development, financing, construction, management, and more. Proptech’s boosters promise frictionless and efficient housing markets. However, Proptech appears to be reinforcing existing […]
Marco Loos, ‘Repairing Consumer Sales Law’
ABSTRACT Traditionally, European consumer law has primarily focused on consumer protection. Much attention was spent on strengthening consumer rights and later also on enhancing the enforcement of consumer rights. More recently, consumer law has also been given a role to play in stimulating sustainability and a circular economy, in particular by stimulating repair. This paper […]
Michael Goodyear, ‘A Rising Tide Lifts All Consumers: Penumbras of Foreign Data Protection Laws in the United States’
ABSTRACT With the growth of collecting, processing, and transferring personal information to third parties, consumers’ data is increasingly exposed to a myriad of risks. Perhaps chief among these are the data protection practices of data collectors themselves. Yet despite the risk to consumers, US data protection law has remained fragmented, focused on individual industries at […]
Kim and Fortnow, ‘Contract and Commercial Law Challenges with AI Products and Services’
ABSTRACT The development of AI promises to increase innovation and facilitate advancements in multiple fields. Yet, as companies rush products to market in a race for dominance in this highly competitive field, the potential for widespread social harm is foreseeable. In the absence of legislation, commercial law and tort law provide standards and remedies governing […]
McGrath and Scholten, ‘Individual accountability: holy grail or poisoned chalice?’
ABSTRACT New legal regimes in various jurisdictions have increased the accountability of senior individuals in financial services to attempt to prevent wrongdoing. This article critically evaluates these efforts using insights from the behavioural sciences research on accountability, the regulatory theory on enforcement, and the criminological literature on compliance. This inquiry is pursued through an analysis […]