Category Archives: Consumer Law
Marios Papamichalis, ‘High-Volume Plaintiff-Side Counsel and Single-Appearance Eviction Cases in Philadelphia’
ABSTRACT Among 755,004 Philadelphia landlord–tenant records filed during 1969-2022, 396,163 residential cases involve tenants who appear exactly once in the observed docket. In unadjusted comparisons, single-appearance cases handled by high-volume plaintiff-side counsel are more likely to advance to the writ-of-possession and served-writ stages, but no more likely to end in default. Comparisons within the same […]
James Devenney, ‘Brexit, consumer law and legal pluralism: the case for an optional instrument on core consumer law’
ABSTRACT This article challenges the view that Brexit was a vote for a bonfire of core consumer law of European union (EU) origin. It explores evidence that regulatory differences are impacting on United Kingdom (UK) businesses’ trading in the EU; as well as EU businesses’ appetite to trade in the UK. In consumer sales such […]
Serkin and Sitaraman, ‘Post-Neoliberal Housing Policy’
ABSTRACT For the last half-century, housing policy debates and proposals have been dominated by neoliberal, market-based ideas. But after decades of such policies, the United States faces a housing crisis. Property values have soared in recent years, putting housing out of reach for many people. Policymakers on both the right and left are looking for […]
Aleksandrs Fillers, ‘Extension of consumer protection in EU private international law’
ABSTRACT The protection of weaker parties is one of the cornerstones of EU private international law. Consumers are traditionally regarded as typical weaker parties that deserve special protection at the level of private international law. The Brussels Ia Regulation and the Rome I Regulation do not protect all consumers. To be protected, consumers must meet […]
Francesco Lucherini, ‘The Housing Challenge to Neoliberal Homeownership: Profitability Relativism and Governance Asymmetry as Post-Neoliberalization’
ABSTRACT The widespread rise of renting unaffordability and gentrification across European cities has drawn attention to the social unsustainability of heavily financialized and privatized housing markets. Indeed, contemporary patterns of standardization and depoliticization of housing crises collide with the increasingly pronounced functional equivalence between tenancies and home-owning, as well as with future urbanization prospects. The […]
Morell and Schellenberg, ‘Regulating Third-Party Litigation Funding? Weighing the Arguments in the Light of Extant EU Consumer Protection Safeguards’
ABSTRACT This paper cautions against the use of consumer protection as a Trojan horse for broader regulation of third-party litigation funding (TPLF) in the EU. The EU already operates a uniform consumer protection framework that prevents adverse outcomes for consumers across the board, including legal services. Section II evaluates a selection of arguments commonly advanced […]
Samples, Ireland and Beelen, ‘Introducing a New Longitudinal Corpus of Digital Contracts, 1999-2025’
ABSTRACT The terms of use (TOUs) of major digital platforms are among the most prolific contracts in human history, yet their evolution over time remains largely unexamined. Efforts to study change in digital contracts are hindered by their ephemeral nature and the scarcity of publicly available data. This paper introduces the Longitudinal Digital Terms Corpus […]
Emma Laurie, ‘The Enduring Allure of Neoliberalism: Individualising Responsibility for Housing Costs in the English Private Rental Sector’
ABSTRACT This paper explores how the affordability of rents is addressed in the long-anticipated reform of the English private rental sector (PRS) by the Renters’ Rights Act 2025. The PRS has doubled in size since 2010, acting as a social housing substitute for some households. Its tenants spend the highest proportion of income on housing […]
Elengold and Laing, ‘Offsetting Justice: Using Government Power To Collect Private Debts’
ABSTRACT Private creditors regularly hire third-party debt collectors to recoup debt on their behalf by contacting, coercing, and suing consumer debtors. Scholars, advocates, and policymakers have paid significant attention to this booming industry, which is pervasive and rife with abuse. But there is one third-party debt collector who has largely escaped attention and critique: the […]
Abraham Wickelgren, ‘The Effect of Consumer Inferences on Product Regulation When Information Is Costly’
ABSTRACT Consumers often value products whose purchase could also harm them, either through adverse health effects or, often with digital products, the release of sensitive data about themselves. In many cases, consumers do not know exactly how great these risk are, but they can engage in some research to learn more about it. Alternatively, the […]