Category Archives: Consumer Law
Wayne Barnes, ‘Form Contract Consent and the Doctrinal Ordinariness of Limited Awareness’
ABSTRACT Contract scholars have objected to enforcement of standard form contracts for over a century, arguing that consumer ‘consent’ to unread boilerplate fundamentally lacks legitimacy. The critique centers on ‘limited awareness’ – consumers neither read nor understand the fine print terms to which they ostensibly assent by signing or clicking. This absence of full, knowing […]
Eran Kahana, ‘The Privacy Veil’
ABSTRACT Privacy law rests on a failed premise. The notice-and-consent paradigm assumes users will read privacy policies, understand them, and make informed choices. They cannot. Reading the policies an average American encounters would require thirty working days per year. Nearly half of American adults lack the literacy to comprehend them. Even informed users cannot negotiate […]
Jie Ouyang, ‘Turning EU Consumer Law Against Itself? Taking Stock of the EU’s Sustainable Consumption Strategy’
ABSTRACT The escalating ecological impact of private consumption has generated growing momentum among policymakers to promote sustainable consumption. This article critically assesses the EU’s strategy for sustainable consumption within the broader political economy of the Union. Grounded in the information paradigm, the EU’s primary approach has been to empower ethical individual choice to drive market […]
Myriam Gilles, ‘Arbitration In Name Only’
ABSTRACT Modern arbitration clauses hide a dirty secret: many aren’t arbitration at all. They masquerade as mutual commitments to fair and efficient private dispute resolution but, in truth, are mere imitations of genuine arbitration provisions. Some reserve for the drafter the power to amend or terminate the clause at will without notice or consent from […]
Utkarsh Tiwari, ‘Price Dominance Doctrine: Reclaiming the Doctrine of Offer in Modern Contract Law’
ABSTRACT This paper proposes a necessary evolution of the doctrine of invitation to offer in contract law, as established in Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain v Boots Cash Chemists (1953), in response to contemporary commercial practices. It argues that modern pricing mechanisms in both offline and digital commerce frequently operate as dominant inducements rather than […]
Thi Nha Nam Bach, ‘Reforming the Duty of Disclosure: The Emerging Shift Towards Consumer Protection in Contemporary Insurance Law’
ABSTRACT This article examines the evolution of insurance contract law reforms, focusing on the shift towards a more policyholder-friendly approach to disclosure duties in some Civil Law and Common Law countries. Traditionally, insurance law favoured insurers, but recent reforms have increasingly prioritised consumer protection by adopting inquiry-based disclosure and restricting insurers’ rights to void contracts […]
Hartzog and Solove, ‘Privacy as Contract?’
ABSTRACT Nearly everything people buy, every service they use, every account they create, and even every website they visit involves the collection, use, and transfer of personal data – a matter that is ostensibly governed by privacy notices (also called ‘privacy policies’). Privacy notices are the foundation of privacy regulation; most privacy laws rely on […]
Amy Schmitz, ‘Promise and Pitfalls of AI In Mass Arbitration’
ABSTRACT Mass arbitration has emerged as a strategic response to arbitration clauses that preclude class actions, allowing large numbers of claimants to bring individual arbitration demands against companies for similar grievances. Unlike class actions where a lead claimant represents others, mass arbitration requires each claimant’s active participation in separate proceedings, creating significant administrative burdens and […]
‘Slowing Down the Clicks’
Brett Frischmann and Moshe Y Vardi, ‘Better Digital Contracts with Prosocial Friction-in-Design’, 65 Jurimetrics Journal 1 (2025). Brett Frischmann and Moshe Y Vardi’s article, ‘Better Digital Contracts with Prosocial Friction-in-Design’, wrestles with perhaps the most vexing problem facing contract law today – what to do about the proliferation of digital contracts that infest our screens. […]
‘New Trends in Teaching Contract Law’ – special issue of Law Teacher
€ Introduction to The Law Teacher special issue on ‘New Trends in Teaching Contract Law’ (Fred Motson and Marton Ribary) € Teaching contracts backwards: benefits of starting with remedies in contract law pedagogy (Seyed MA Zavarei) Revitalising unconscionable dealing in English law through interjurisdictional teaching (Raul Madden) Teaching contract law across multiple jurisdictions (Muhammad Zubair […]