Boilerplate--the fine-print terms and conditions that we become subject to when we click "I agree" online, rent an apartment, enter an employment contract, sign up for a cellphone carrier, or buy travel tickets--pervades all aspects of our modern lives. On a daily basis, most of us accept boilerplate provisions without realizing that should a dispute arise about a purchased good or service, the nonnegotiable boilerplate terms can deprive us of our right to jury trial and relieve providers of responsibility for harm. "Boilerplate" is the first comprehensive treatment of the problems posed by the increasing use of these terms, demonstrating how their use has degraded traditional notions of consent, agreement, and contract, and sacrificed core rights whose loss threatens the democratic order.

Margaret Jane Radin examines attempts to justify the use of boilerplate provisions by claiming either that recipients freely consent to them or that economic efficiency demands them, and she finds these justifications wanting. She argues, moreover, that our courts, legislatures, and regulatory agencies have fallen short in their evaluation and oversight of the use of boilerplate clauses. To improve legal evaluation of boilerplate, Radin offers a new analytical framework, one that takes into account the nature of the rights affected, the quality of the recipient's consent, and the extent of the use of these terms. Radin goes on to offer possibilities for new methods of boilerplate evaluation and control, among them the bold suggestion that tort law rather than contract law provides a preferable analysis for some boilerplate schemes. She concludes by discussing positive steps that NGOs, legislators, regulators, courts, and scholars could take to bring about better practices.

Perhaps no kind of regulation is more common or less useful than mandated disclosure--requiring one party to a transaction to give the other information. It is the iTunes terms you assent to, the doctor's consent form you sign, the pile of papers you get with your mortgage. Reading the terms, the form, and the papers is supposed to equip you to choose your purchase, your treatment, and your loan well. "More Than You Wanted to Know" surveys the evidence and finds that mandated disclosure rarely works. But how could it? Who reads these disclosures? Who understands them? Who uses them to make better choices?

Omri Ben-Shahar and Carl Schneider put the regulatory problem in human terms. Most people find disclosures complex, obscure, and dull. Most people make choices by stripping information away, not layering it on. Most people find they can safely ignore most disclosures and that they lack the literacy to analyze them anyway. And so many disclosures are mandated that nobody could heed them all. Nor can all this be changed by simpler forms in plainer English, since complex things cannot be made simple by better writing. Furthermore, disclosure is a lawmakers' panacea, so they keep issuing new mandates and expanding old ones, often instead of taking on the hard work of writing regulations with bite.

Timely and provocative, "More Than You Wanted to Know" takes on the form of regulation we encounter daily and asks why we must encounter it at all.

Consumer out-of-court redress in the European Union is experiencing a significant transformation; indeed the current changes are the most important that have occurred in the history of the EU. This is due to the recent implementation of the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Directive 2013/11/EU and the Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) Regulation (EU) 2013/524. The Directive ensures the availability of quality ADR schemes and sets information obligations on businesses, and the Regulation enables the resolution of consumer disputes through a pan European ODR platform. The New Regulatory Framework for Consumer Dispute Resolution examines the impact of the new EU law in the field of consumer redress. Part I of the volume examines the new European legal framework and the main methods of consumer redress, including mediation, arbitration, and ombudsman schemes. Part II analyses the implementation of the ADR Directive in nine Member States with very different legal cultures in consumer redress, namely: Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Germany, France, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands and the UK, as well as the distinct approach taken in the US. Part III evaluates new trends in consumer ADR (CDR) by identifying best practices and looking at future trends in the field. In particular, it offers a vision of the future of CDR which is more than a mere dispute resolution tool, it poses a model on dispute system design for CDR, it examines the challenges of cross-border disputes, it proposes a strategy to promote mediation, and it identifies good practices of CDR and collective redress. The book concludes by calling for the mandatory participation of traders in CDR.

In der Medizin verspricht die Nanotechnologie enorme Fortschritte, jedoch nicht ohne Nachteile. Die Unberechenbarkeit der mit der Nanotechnologie hergestellten Nanopartikel nimmt die Autorin zum Anlass, die Folgen fur die klinische Prufung am Menschen, insbesondere fur die Risiko-Nutzen-Abwagung, zu untersuchen und stellt die Frage, ob das Restrisiko noch als sozialadaquat angesehen werden kann. Sie analysiert die Vereinbarkeit mit ethischen Grundsatzen und den Konflikt der Grundrechte der Studienteilnehmer mit denen der Patienten, der AErzte und der Pharmaunternehmen. Sie zeigt zudem, dass mangels einer einheitlichen Definition der Nanotechnologie und ihrer Produkte bei Verbrauchern und Anwendern eine Rechtsunsicherheit besteht, die es durch den europaischen bzw. nationalen Gesetzgeber auszuraumen gilt.

Holiday Law: The Law Relating to Travel and Tourism, considered to be the leading text on holiday law, provides a comprehensive guide to the law as it relates to all forms of holidays. Its broad coverage of the subject includes the nature of the contractual relationship between tour operator, civil liability and the effects of insolvency and examines the travel industry and looks at the agencies that regulate the industry.

All modern legal systems within advanced economies must address the question of how to respond to the needs of insolvent consumers whose burden of debt greatly exceeds their capacity to repay within a reasonable time frame. This study surveys comparatively the insolvency regimes currently in place or likely to be adopted in the foreseeable future in Canada, the United States, Australia, England and Wales, Scotland, Scandinavia and a representative group of Western countries on the continent of Europe. Modern legal systems have two basic alternatives in providing relief for over-committed consumers. The first, which involves restricting the enforcement of individual creditor remedies is a method with which this study is not concerned. Where the consumer is seriously insolvent and owes money to many creditors, a different approach is required - a collective solution to debtor's problems - and this, the solution provided by modern insolvency systems, is the focus of this study.

Boilerplate--the fine-print terms and conditions that we become subject to when we click "I agree" online, rent an apartment, enter an employment contract, sign up for a cellphone carrier, or buy travel tickets--pervades all aspects of our modern lives. On a daily basis, most of us accept boilerplate provisions without realizing that should a dispute arise about a purchased good or service, the nonnegotiable boilerplate terms can deprive us of our right to jury trial and relieve providers of responsibility for harm. Boilerplate is the first comprehensive treatment of the problems posed by the increasing use of these terms, demonstrating how their use has degraded traditional notions of consent, agreement, and contract, and sacrificed core rights whose loss threatens the democratic order. Margaret Jane Radin examines attempts to justify the use of boilerplate provisions by claiming either that recipients freely consent to them or that economic efficiency demands them, and she finds these justifications wanting. She argues, moreover, that our courts, legislatures, and regulatory agencies have fallen short in their evaluation and oversight of the use of boilerplate clauses. To improve legal evaluation of boilerplate, Radin offers a new analytical framework, one that takes into account the nature of the rights affected, the quality of the recipient's consent, and the extent of the use of these terms. Radin goes on to offer possibilities for new methods of boilerplate evaluation and control, among them the bold suggestion that tort law rather than contract law provides a preferable analysis for some boilerplate schemes. She concludes by discussing positive steps that NGOs, legislators, regulators, courts, and scholars could take to bring about better practices.

This collection includes essays by eleven leading public health experts, economists, physicians, political scientists, and lawyers, whose activities encompass Congressional testimonies, Surgeon General's reports on youth smoking, and clinical trials for drugs for smoking cessation. They analyze specific strategies that have been used to influence tobacco use, including taxation, regulation of advertising and promotion, regulation of indoor smoking, control of youth access to cigarettes and other tobacco products, litigation, and subsidies of smoking cessation, and set them against the latest scientific findings about tobacco and the changing cultural and political setting against which policy decisions are being made.

This insightful book considers phenomena such as mass torts, which affect numerous victims, and complex insolvency cases, which concern multiple and often competing interests. The editors identify and respond to the need for reflection on the notion of 'mass justice'. The assembled contributors show that while private law is usually debated in terms of individual rights and duties, the reality is that these are deeply influenced by collective issues. They address examples such as the operation of class actions; the availability of insurance funds; the logistics of negotiating with and compensating a wide range of individuals; as well as distribution of assets in insolvency proceedings. This unique and detailed book will appeal to academics and students of private law as well as those with an interest in law and society. Scholars from non-law disciplines with an interest in insurance and liability will also find this study thought-provoking, as will practitioners and policy makers. Contributors: Z. Even, C. Hodges, G. Howells, E. Kocher, R. Lee, R. Merkin, D. Milman, R.A. Nagareda, W. Oosterveen, A. Stadler, R. Stech, J. Steele, W.H. van Boom, F.M.J. Verstijlen

Studies have found that the purchasing power of American women is potentially the greatest in the world. So why not support the rights of women while you shop? Fun to read, easy to use, and packed with the latest information available, The Feminist Dollar gives you the basic facts about gender fairness and equity as it is - or is not - practiced by corporations and governments, so that you can make informed decisions about the policies you want to support when buying merchandise and traveling abroad. Among the almost 400 companies covered here that make and market the products you buy and use every day, you will discover which promote women, have generous childcare or family leave policies, or contribute to organizations that benefit women, so that you can apply economic pressure where it can make a difference. Also, you will find the FEM - feminist evaluation measure - ratings of some of the states and countries to which you might travel.

Debattista on Bills of Lading in Commodity Trade provides not so much a linear road-map as a GPS system, allowing the reader to locate which aspect of the bill of lading is central to the dispute they are dealing with and evaluating that aspect from the perspective of each of: (1) the contract of sale; (2) carriage contract and (3) letter of credit. The title examines questions such as: How can a buyer ensure in their sale contract that the bill of lading the buyer receives from the seller gives them secure title to sue the carrier? What impact does the choice of a particular Incoterms rule have on whom the carrier can sue under the contract of carriage? Where there is a claim by a buyer/cargo-claimant for loss, damage or delay to goods, must they factor any gains or benefits made under the sale contract claim/settlement into the quantum claimed in the cargo-claim against the carrier? What is a 'charterparty bill of lading' - and can it be tendered under a letter of credit? When and why might a seller need to "switch" bills of lading for its buyer or its bank - and does the seller have a right to demand the switching of bills under the Hague-Visby Rules? All of these questions - and many others like them - cut across areas of law normally siloed in academic and practitioner texts. The purpose of this title is to make links and draw out connections, with a view to assisting lawyers when a dispute arises - and others drafting different contracts seeking to avoid problems arising in the first place. The fourth edition of this work, now bearing a new title and benefitting from the arrival of a co-author, has been fully revised to take account of case-law and regulatory developments in the twelve years since the last edition.

This book consists of contributions exploring from different perspectives the 'images' of the consumer in EU law. The images of the consumer form the foundation for various EU policies, more or less directly oriented towards the goal of consumer protection. The purpose of the volume is to establish what visions of the consumer there are in different contexts of EU law, whether they are consistent, and whether EU law's engagement with consumer-related considerations is sincere or merely instrumental to the achievement of other goals. The chapters discuss how consumers should be protected in EU contract, competition, free movement and trade mark law. They reflect on the limits of the consumer empowerment rationale as the basis for EU consumer policy. The chapters look also at the variety of concerns consumers might have, including the cost of goods and services, access to credit, ethical questions of consumption, the challenges of excessive choice and the possibility to influence the content of regulatory measures, and explore the significance of these issues for the EU's legislative and judicial process.

This book provides a systematic analysis of the law of sale of goods with reference to UK and Commonwealth authorities and relevant UK and EU legislation. With particular clarity of expression the work covers fully content, interpretation, and performance issues relating to sale of goods agreements. Aspects of consumer law are dealt with where relevant as are issues such as recoverability of damages, currency and interest. Since the last edition there has been a substantial flow of new case law which include the following selected group: Yearworth (on body fluids); Gammasonics (software); VFS Financial Services and Welcome Financial Services (on Part III of the Hire Purchase Act); Great Elephant (on a seller's s 12 liability); Force India Formula One (s.12 and recovery of money on a failure of consideration); The Mercini Lady (on risk and durability); damages decisions in the wake of The Achilleas; Kulkarni and Wincanton (on the passing of property); Samarenko (on making time of the essence); Brewer (description); McDonald (on examination and satisfactory quality); Lowe (Part 5A of the Sale of Goods Act); case law under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008. All of these, and others, are given full treatment in this new edition. There is also a full treatment of the 2008 regulations on cancellation of contracts. The second edition also includes extended analysis of proprietary rights in bulk goods, and of fitness and quality of goods in relation to compliance with public standards. The material on consumer protection measures has been expanded in relation to liabilities of the seller and third parties. Additional material also deals with changes to the Consumer Credit Act 1974, the definition of exclusion clauses, Part III of the Hire Purchase Act 1964, time of the essence, concurrent contractual duties and suspension, waiver and election, description and general contract law, and misrepresentation and insolvency. This book provides detailed and clear treatment of problem areas and offers new lines of argument and ideas to those interpreting the law and presenting a case. This is a leading work of scholarship and an invaluable reference for all lawyers and scholars working in the field.

Consumers routinely enter into long-term contracts with providers of goods and services - from credit cards, mortgages, cell phones, insurance, TV, and internet services to household appliances, theatre and sports events, health clubs, magazine subscriptions, transportation, and more. Across these consumer markets certain design features of contracts are recurrent, and puzzling. Why do sellers design contracts to provide short-term benefits and impose long-term costs? Why are low introductory prices so common? Why are the contracts themselves so complex, with numerous fees and interest rates, tariffs and penalties?
Seduction by Contract explains how consumer contracts emerge from the interaction between market forces and consumer psychology. Consumers are short-sighted and optimistic, so sellers compete to offer short-term benefits, while imposing long-term costs. Consumers are imperfectly rational, so sellers hide the true costs of products and services in complex contracts. Consumers are seduced by contracts that increase perceived benefits, without actually providing more benefits, and decrease perceived costs, without actually reducing the costs that consumers ultimately bear.
Competition does not help this behavioural market failure. It may even exacerbate it. Sellers, operating in a competitive market, have no choice but to align contract design with the psychology of consumers. A high-road seller who offers what she knows to be the best contract will lose business to the low-road seller who offers what the consumer mistakenly believes to be the best contract. Put bluntly, competition forces sellers to exploit the biases and misperceptions of their customers.
Seduction by Contract argues that better legal policy can help consumers and enhance market efficiency. Disclosure mandates provide a promising avenue for regulatory intervention. Simple, aggregate disclosures can help consumers make better choices. Comprehensive disclosures can facilitate the work of intermediaries, enabling them to better advise consumers. Effective disclosure would expose the seductive nature of consumer contracts and, as a result, reduce sellers' incentives to write inefficient contracts.
Developing its explanation through a general framework and detailed case studies of three major consumer markets (credit cards, mortgages, and cell phones), Seduction by Contract is an accessible introduction to the law and economics of consumer contracts, and a powerful critique of current regulatory policy.

Die Autorin nimmt die Reform des Gesetzes gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerb (UWG) im Jahr 2015 zum Anlass, die damit einhergehenden AEnderungen im Hinblick auf das Spurbarkeitsmerkmal zu untersuchen. Anhand verschiedener Fragestellungen und einer Analyse der Rechtsprechung zum Spurbarkeitsmerkmal wird unter anderem uberpruft, ob die sprachlichen und gesetzessystematischen Anpassungen des UWG 2015 an die Richtlinie uber unlautere Geschaftspraktiken tatsachlich keine AEnderung der materiellen Rechtslage mit sich bringen wird oder ob und in welchem Umfang fur die Rechtsprechung Anpassungsbedarf besteht. Daruber hinaus uberpruft die Autorin, ob eine Auswirkungsanalyse im Sinne des oekonomischen Ansatzes des more economic approach oder oekonomische Ansatze, wie etwa die Neue Institutionenoekonomik oder die Informationsoekonomie, Unterstutzung in der Rechtsanwendung des UWG liefern koennten.

The fourth edition of this established and highly-regarded work is the most systematic study available of the law of sale of goods with reference to UK and Commonwealth authorities and relevant UK and EU legislation. A distinguishing feature of the work is the depth of treatment of problem areas, providing clarity on the law. It provides full coverage of content, interpretation and performance issues relating to sale of goods agreements. The book also addresses the relevant aspects of consumer law, as well as issues such as recoverability of damages, currency and interest. The work has been updated in its fourth edition to cover all recent developments in caselaw, most notably The Supreme Court in PST Energy 7 Shipping LLC v OW Bunker Malta Ltd (The Res Cogitans) [2016] UKSC 23 which has given rise to a new category of contract: the sui generis supply contract, for which no statutory model yet exists. Also examined in depth is the Consumer Rights Act 2015, which has profoundly affected the structure of sales law and, in a number of key instances, has also affected the substance of the law. This work remains the leading work of scholarship and an invaluable reference for all practitioners and scholars working in the field.

The Politics of Precaution examines the politics of consumer and environmental risk regulation in the United States and Europe over the last five decades, explaining why America and Europe have often regulated a wide range of similar risks differently. It finds that between 1960 and 1990, American health, safety, and environmental regulations were more stringent, risk averse, comprehensive, and innovative than those adopted in Europe. But since around 1990, the book shows, global regulatory leadership has shifted to Europe. What explains this striking reversal? David Vogel takes an in-depth, comparative look at European and American policies toward a range of consumer and environmental risks, including vehicle air pollution, ozone depletion, climate change, beef and milk hormones, genetically modified agriculture, antibiotics in animal feed, pesticides, cosmetic safety, and hazardous substances in electronic products. He traces how concerns over such risks--and pressure on political leaders to do something about them--have risen among the European public but declined among Americans. Vogel explores how policymakers in Europe have grown supportive of more stringent regulations while those in the United States have become sharply polarized along partisan lines. And as European policymakers have grown more willing to regulate risks on precautionary grounds, increasingly skeptical American policymakers have called for higher levels of scientific certainty before imposing additional regulatory controls on business.

Blackstone's Guide to Consumer Sales and Associated Guarantees provides a practical and contextual guide to the important new Guarantees Directive and its implementation. The book deals with the relationship and interaction of these new rights with the existing sale of goods legislation.

Consumer law and policy has emerged in the last half-century as a major policy concern for all nations. This Handbook of original contributions provides an international and comparative analysis of central issues in consumer law and policy in developed and developing economies.The Handbook encompasses questions of both social policy and effective business regulation. Many of the issues are common to all countries and are becoming increasingly globalised due to the growth in international trade and technological developments such as the Internet. The authors provide a broad coverage of both substantive topics and institutional questions concerning optimal approaches to enforcement and the role of class actions in consumer policy. It also includes comparative insights into the influential EU and US models of consumer law and relates consumer law to contemporary trends in human rights law. Written by a carefully selected group of international experts, this text represents an authoritative resource for understanding contemporary and future developments in consumer law. This Handbook will provide students, researchers and policymakers with an insight to the main policy debates in each context and provide models of legal regulation to assist in the evaluation of laws and the development of consumer law and policy.

This is the first practitioner's work on the new rule (19.III) on Group Litigation Orders under the Civil Procedure Rules. It provides exhaustive analysis of the new rule and relates it to the extensive experience which has been gained in the major multi-party actions of recent years, setting out the key lessons to be learned in terms of how such actions should be managed. Case studies include the Sellafield radiation claims, the Lloyd's litigation, Norplant, the British Coal Vibration White Finger litigation, and other major cases.

Based on the earlier "Consumer Law: Text, Cases and Materials" by David Oughton, this work seeks to explain the general principles which underlie consumer protection law and the many ways in which those principles are applied. It provides students of consumer law with an up-to-date and readable text on the subject. Topics of central importance are those of consumer redress, product quality, product safety (including food safety), consumer services law (with particular reference to repair services), holidays, consumer insurance and consumer finance.;There is also a discussion of the various methods by which advertising, sales promotion practices and misleading claims are regulated. Where appropriate, domestic law is related to the general principles and policies of European Community law which have increasingly come to recognise the consumer interest. In this respect, account has been taken of the effect of the Treaty of Amsterdam which, amongst other things, has renumbered many of the familiar provisions of the Treaty of Rome. The book also considers the relevant merits and disadvantages of business self-regulation under both trade association codes of practice and the growing number of statutory codes of practice introduced to reduce the burdens on business created by legislative intervention.;This edition takes account of a number of judicial decisions in the appellate courts and below, and also takes account of the provisions of the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999, the Access to Justice Act 1999, the Civil Procedure Rules 1998, the Food Standards Act 1999, the Human Rights Act 1998, the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 and the EC Directive on Consumer Sales and Associated Guarantees 1999.

Markets run on information. Buyers make decisions by relying on their knowledge of the products available, and sellers decide what to produce based on their understanding of what buyers want. But the distribution of market information has changed, as consumers increasingly turn to sources that act as intermediaries for information-companies like Yelp and Google. Antitrust Law in the New Economy considers a wide range of problems that arise around one aspect of information in the marketplace: its quality. Sellers now have the ability and motivation to distort the truth about their products when they make data available to intermediaries. And intermediaries, in turn, have their own incentives to skew the facts they provide to buyers, both to benefit advertisers and to gain advantages over their competition. Consumer protection law is poorly suited for these problems in the information economy. Antitrust law, designed to regulate powerful firms and prevent collusion among producers, is a better choice. But the current application of antitrust law pays little attention to information quality. Mark Patterson discusses a range of ways in which data can be manipulated for competitive advantage and exploitation of consumers (as happened in the LIBOR scandal), and he considers novel issues like "confusopoly" and sellers' use of consumers' personal information in direct selling. Antitrust law can and should be adapted for the information economy, Patterson argues, and he shows how courts can apply antitrust to address today's problems.