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This book analyses the history of the common law foundations of consumer law, and encourages readers to rethink the role that consumer law plays in our society. Consumer law is often constructed as purely statute-based law. However – as this collection will demonstrate – this is far from the truth. Much of the history of the common law concerns consumer transactions and markets. Case law has often established or modified the ground rules of consumer markets, has had a patterning effect on the economic organisation of markets, and has expressed cultural visions of the market and consumers. An analysis of landmark cases of consumer law allows many traditional cases to be viewed through a new and distinct lens, providing significant academic and intellectual value.The collection also includes a unique socio-legal perspective, considering the role that consumer law has played in addressing racial discrimination, LGBTQ challenges and the rights of women.This collection of landmark cases demonstrates the theoretical and practical significance of consumer law through a wide range of contributions by distinguished authors from the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States and Australia.

The Routledge Handbook of Consumer Protection and Behaviour in Energy Markets provides a comprehensive study of consumer protection and consumer behaviour in selected jurisdictions worldwide. Each chapter is written by experts and provides a contemporary overview of national consumer protection and policy developments in the energy sector. Today energy has become an essential factor in ensuring the socio-economic development of any country and improving the quality of life of society and is now an essential element of life for everyone. The energy market has become a competitive market, based on the assumption that generation and sale of energy is not a natural monopoly and that market mechanisms, in particular competition between energy companies, are the best way to reduce prices and improve customer service. The purchase of energy is inextricably linked with its distribution from the producer to the purchaser. The book shows that well-functioning energy markets need informed and well protected consumers, who can benefit from competition and transparent offers. They are free to choose the most competitive providers, and know their rights, with access to effective means of redress. Given that the energy market has a specific, technical nature, the book analyses the energy market within the scope of free market principles, with a focus on the protection of the weaker party to the contract: the consumer. In addition, consumers can also play an active part of the clean energy transition.

Esta obra aborda las conexiones apreciables entre el Derecho de contratos y el Derecho represor de la competencia desleal con el fin de analizar las posibles soluciones a los problemas derivados de la contratación de consumo afectada por prácticas comerciales desleales. Tras una breve introducción donde se da debida cuenta del propósito de la investigación y de su justificación, el trabajo se inicia con la exposición de la tradicional situación de desconexión entre las disciplinas contractual y concurrencial. Posteriormente, se analizan las conexiones intersectoriales en los planos axiológico y funcional, así como los distintos materiales normativos de los que se infieren esas aún incipientes conexiones. Sobre la base de lo anterior, se examinan las medidas correctoras individuales que el Derecho de la competencia desleal pone a disposición de los consumidores para hacer frente a las prácticas desleales, las propuestas de lege ferenda proporcionadas por la doctrina patria para remover los efectos contractuales de dichas prácticas, así como las diversas soluciones ofrecidas por distintos Estados miembros de la Unión Europea. A continuación, se analizan los nuevos materiales normativos provenientes de Bruselas que ahondan en el proceso de permeabilización entre el Derecho de contratos y el Derecho de la competencia desleal, así como las iniciativas legislativas tendentes a su incorporación a nuestro ordenamiento. El trabajo concluye con la propuesta de algunas directrices para lograr lo que entendemos que sería una correcta incorporación de los mandatos comunitarios e interpretar correctamente la normativa ya existente sobre la materia.

Internet of Things and the Law: Legal Strategies for Consumer-Centric Smart Technologies is the most comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the legal issues in the Internet of Things (IoT). For decades, the decreasing importance of tangible wealth and power – and the increasing significance of their disembodied counterparts – has been the subject of much legal research. For some time now, legal scholars have grappled with how laws drafted for tangible property and predigital ‘offline'technologies can cope with dematerialisation, digitalisation, and the internet. As dematerialisation continues, this book aims to illuminate the opposite movement: rematerialisation, namely, the return of data, knowledge, and power within a physical ‘smart'world. This development frames the book's central question: can the law steer rematerialisation in a human-centric and socially just direction? To answer it, the book focuses on the IoT, the sociotechnological phenomenon that is primarily responsible for this shift. After a thorough analysis of how existing laws can be interpreted to empower IoT end users, Noto La Diega leaves us with the fundamental question of what happens when the law fails us and concludes with a call for collective resistance against ‘smart'capitalism.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

International Banking and Finance Law Series, Volume 37 Despite open banking's broad emergence in a variety of jurisdictions and the ambition shared for the benefits it is to deliver, there is a distinct lack of detailed analysis of the legal features which are needed for it to be effectively established. This indispensable study is the first to analyse open banking's legal foundations by reference to banking law rather than to privacy law or competition law. With a detailed focus on the mature open banking systems of Australia and the United Kingdom, including Australia's Consumer Data Right, the book's thoroughgoing legal perspective provides a comprehensive framework which can be used to evaluate and design open banking in any jurisdiction. The presentation proceeds through a comparison of the legal rights, responsibilities, and relationships under open banking systems with equivalent rights in traditional banking payment systems. This process clearly reveals and addresses such salient open banking and data-sharing issues as the following: what data should be shareable and who should be required to share data; how data should be shared and how rights to share data should be established; the role of data minimisation and the role of consent; how laws, standards, rules, and technology interact in an open banking system; how open banking fosters competition, innovation, and financial inclusion; how consumer protection can be included by design; management of quality and security of shared data; facilitation and regulation of participation; legal relationships and allocation of liability among participants; compensation for customers if something goes wrong; strategic challenges and opportunities; enforceability and insolvency; systemic efficacy and safety; and the role of trust. Also included is an assessment framework designed to categorise the risks which arise in open banking and other data-sharing systems. As a systematic appraisal of how banking law can be used to ensure the customer autonomy, data portability, recipient accountability and participant connectivity promised by open banking systems, the book's legal perspective on the value of customer data will prove of inestimable value for lawyers in banking and finance, as well as for professionals in financial services or information technology.

The Consumer Welfare Hypothesis in Law and Economics is a compelling account of market relations with firm roots in economic theory and legal practice. This incisive book challenges the mainstream view that allocative efficiency is about total welfare maximisation. Instead, it argues for the consumer welfare hypothesis, in which allocating resources efficiently means maximising consumer welfare, and demonstrates that legal structures such as antitrust and consumer law are in reality designed and practised with this goal in mind.Using this paradigm, Fabrizio Esposito overcomes the opposition between efficiency and distribution and provides a firmer basis for debates about the foundations of contract law, antitrust law and consumer law, particularly in the European Union. The outcome is a bilateral view of the connection between the law and the economy and a rich research agenda to further understanding of the legal-economic nexus.Scholars and students of law and economics, as well as contract, consumer and antitrust and competition law will find this book a thought-provoking study. Its innovative yet straightforward conceptual framework will also be of interest to practitioners, policymakers and stakeholders in these fields.

This comprehensive work covers the consumer protection laws and policies of governing bodies around the world. By presenting materials from edited laws, directives, courts cases, administrative regulations, and commission studies, the author explores the different approaches to the regulation of advertising, sales practices, credit, and product safety and quality. The methods by which consumer protection laws are enforced at the public and private level are also examined.Published under the Transnational Publishers imprint.

Una de las consecuencias de la crisis sanitaria derivada de la Covid- 19 ha sido el incremento de las adquisiciones de bienes de consumo a través de internet. Con este trabajo se pretende exponer una reflexión sobre la relación entre el comercio electrónico y la perspectiva de la sostenibilidad ambiental, de género y de la discapacidad y la protección de los intereses de las personas consumidoras desde las mismas. El punto de partida serán los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible de las Naciones Unidas y la declaración de que nadie debe quedar atrás. En cuanto a las personas en situación de discapacidad, en la medida en que su acceso al comercio electrónico en condiciones de igualdad respecto de consumidores que no se encuentren en dicha situación puede estar comprometida; respecto a las mujeres como consumidoras, para comprobar la presencia de la perspectiva de género en la normativa que de modo fundamental tiene por finalidad la defensa de los denominados derechos básicos de los consumidores; y en tercer lugar, se centra la atención en el papel que la persona consumidora está llamada a desempeñar en materia de consumo sostenible contribuyendo así a la protección ambiental. Partiendo de lo declarado en la Constitución Española, se aborda un estudio descriptivo y crítico de la forma en que las tres perspectivas y se encuentran integrados en el Texto refundido de la Ley General para la Defensa de Consumidores y Usuarios. Ciencias Jurídicas y Sociales. Eva R. Jordá Capitán. La autora es profesora de la URJC.

This book charts the difficulties encountered by vulnerable consumers in their access to justice, through the contributions of prominent authors (academic, practitioners and consultants) in the field of consumer law and access to justice. It demonstrates that despite the development of ADR, access to justice is still severely lacking for the vulnerable consumer. The book highlights that a broad understanding of access to justice, which encompasses good regulation and its public enforcement, is an essential ingredient alongside access to the mechanisms of traditional private justice (courts and ADR) to protect the vulnerable consumer. Indeed, many of the difficulties are linked to normative obstacles and lack of access to justice is primarily a vulnerability in itself that can exacerbate existing ones. In addition, because it may contribute to ‘pushing'already vulnerable consumers into social exclusion it is not simply about economic justice but also about social justice. The book shows that lack of access to justice is not irreversible nor is it necessarily linked to consumer apathy. New technologies could provide solutions. The book concludes with a plea for developing ‘inclusive'justice systems with more emphasis on public enforcement alongside effective courts systems to offer the vulnerable with adequate means to defend themselves.This book will be suitable for both students and practitioners, and all those with an interest in the justice system.