Oren Bar-Gill of Harvard, Omri Ben-Shahar of Chicago, and Florencia Marotta-Wurgler of NYU have written A Companion Guide to the Restatement of Consumer Contracts. Here’s the abstract:
This short Essay, written by the Reporters of the recently published Restatement of Consumer Contracts, is intended as a companion to the Restatement. It highlights three areas, where the Reporters’ ambition was only partially reflected in the final version of the Restatement. The first was to ground the restated rules and principles in a systematic, empirical analysis of the entire body of consumer contracts cases. The second goal was to avoid an emphasis on disclosure mandates that have been shown to be unhelpful and even counter-productive. The third goal was to infuse the Restatement with social science realism, especially in the doctrines of unconscionability and deception. While the Restatement does not fully reflect these methodological priorities, we hope that that the field of consumer contract law will recognize their importance.
