Shmuel I. Becher of Victoria University of Wellington, Yuval Feldman of Bar-Ilan University, and Meirav Furth of UCLA have written Seductive Oral Deals. Here's the abstract: Legal scholars have devoted considerable attention to contractual design that exploits consumers’ vulnerabilities (“the paper deal”). For example, scholars have cautioned against the inclusion of one-sided, exploitative, or unenforceable […]
Category Archives: Consumer Law Scholarship
Claudia Polsky of Berkeley and Megan Schwarzman of Berkeley's School of Public Health have written The Hidden Success of a Conspicuous Law: Proposition 65 and the Reduction of Toxic Chemical Exposures, 47 Ecology Law Quarterly, (Forthcoming 2021). Here is the abstract: Newcomers to California could be forgiven for thinking they have crossed into treacherous terrain. By virtue […]
Shmuel I. Becher of Victoria University of Wellington and Anne-Lise Sibony of UCLouvain; TILEC have written In Search of a Lasting Lightbulb Moment: The Law and Policy of Product Obsolescence. Here's the abstract: Firms frequently employ various strategies that make products obsolete after a relatively short time or limited usage (“product obsolescence”). Early product obsolescence harms […]
David Berman has written A Critique of Consumer Advocacy Against the Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts, 54 Columbia Journal of Law & Social Problems. Here is the abstract: In May 2019, the American Law Institute proposed adopting a Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts. In it, the Restatement’s Reporters suggested a “grand […]
My colleague, Sheldon Evans of St. John's, has written Pandora's Loot Box. Here's the abstract: Virtual worlds are a frontier unlike any other. But as virtual worlds grow exponentially in the internet age, they find more overlap with the real world and the laws that govern it. One such emerging intersection is the advent of […]
Dee Pridgen of Wyoming has written ALI's Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts: Perpetuating a Legal Fiction? 32 Loyola Consumer Law Review No. 3, (2020). Here's the abstract: The American Law Institute’s proposed Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts has undergone a lengthy process of drafts and discussions, but the road to completion has […]
Uri Benoliel of Ramat Gan Law School and Shmuel I. Becher of Victoria University of Wellington have written Termination Without Explanation Contracts. Here is the abstract: Firms routinely terminate their contractual relationship with consumers. During 2019-2020, for example, Facebook terminated 5.4 billion accounts that were supposedly fake; WhatsApp announced that it is terminating 2 million […]
FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra and his attorney-advisor Samuel A.A. Levine have wiritten The Case for Resurrecting the FTC Act’s Penalty Offense Authority. Here is the abstract: This article details why the Federal Trade Commission should resurrect one of the key authorities it abandoned in the 1980s: Section 5(m)(1)(B) of the FTC Act, the Penalty Offense […]
Amy Widman of Rutgers has written Protecting Consumer Protection: Filling the Federal Enforcement Gap, 69 Buffalo Law Review __ (2021) (Forthcoming). Here is the abstract: Since 2014, when a first-of-its-kind empirical study looked at how public enforcers use their authority under UDAP laws, the enforcement landscape has changed. Most notably, the Trump Administration has weakened […]
West has published the fifth edition of Dee Pridgen's Consumer Protection Law in a Nutshell, the best short introduction to consumer protection law and an extremely useful volume for students and practitioners alike (disclosure: I commented on the manuscript of the fourth edition and coauthor a casebook with Dee). Here are some of the bigger […]