Internationalization Of Consumer Law

This book examines the institutions that are producing consumer law at the international level, the substantive issues enshrined in these laws, and the enforcement mechanisms meant to ensure effective protection. The majority of existing research is devoted to the comparative perspective, between countries or between the US and the EU. This book investigates the forceful activities of international and regional organizations, and shifts the focus of research to the internationalization of consumer law, which is largely neglected in particular in the Western-centered political and legal debate. Much of what constitutes consumer law today is focused on banking and finance, and more broadly the financialization and digitalization of the global economy, and society has created a shift in international consumer law production. This book investigates the role that international organizations have on the creation and enforcement of consumer law, and will be of interest to consumer lawyers, practitioners, and officials in organizations such as the United Nations, European Union, and World Bank.

This book reflects the research output of the Committee on the International Protection of Consumers of the International Law Association (ILA). The Committee was created in 2008, with a mandate to study the role of public and private law to protect consumers, review UN Guidelines, and to model laws, international treaties and national legislations concerning protection and consumer redress. It has been accepted to act as an observer not only when the UNCTAD was updating its guidelines, but also at the Hague Conference on Private International Law. The book includes the contributions of various Committee members in the past few years and is a result of the cooperation between the Committee members and experts from Australia, Brazil, Canada and China. It is divided into three parts: the first part addresses trends and challenges in international protection of consumers, while the second part focuses on financial crises and consumer protection and the third part examines national and regional consumer law issues.

This book explores current developments in transnational commercial and consumer law. It features essays written by leading experts, many of who have taken part in the negotiation and formulation of the international instruments they discuss here. The contributors look at issues arising from the profound changes that globalization is having on the legal norms governing commercial and consumer transactions, both domestic and transnational. They consider how relations between private actors, state regulators, and national courts are being completely reconfigured. This, in turn, generates pressures for legal harmonization and creates opportunities for new national and transnational legal norms and procedures to develop. The contributions address both the dynamics and the substance of these developments. Topics included are the UNCITRAL Model Law on secured transactions and on cross-border insolvency, the ICC Uniform Customs and Practices of Documentary Credits (UCP 600), and the dispute resolution mechanism and practices of the World Trade Organization. The content was formerly presented as papers at the 18th Biennial Meeting of the International Academy of Commercial and Consumer Law (the International Academy) at Kyushu University, Japan. Overall, this book provides readers with a solid theoretical foundation and strong familiarity with the practice of law and international commerce, offering realistic and practical conclusions.

1995 marked the 10th anniversary of the adoption by the UN of a set of guidelines for consumer protection. This volume derived from a conference held in that year at Osgoode Law School in Canada. It covers many aspects of consumer protection, including industrializing countries and social justice.

Exploring the advantages and disadvantages of codifying contract law, this book considers the question from the perspectives of both civil and common law systems, referring in detail to issues of international and consumer law. With contributions from leading international scholars, the chapters present a range of opinions on the virtues of codification, encouraging further debate on this topic. The book commences with a discussion on the internationalization imperative for codification of contract law. It then turns to regional issues, exploring first codification attempts in the European Union and Japan, and then issues relevant to codification in the common law jurisdictions of Australia, New Zealand and the United States. The collection concludes with two chapters which consider the need to draw upon both private and comparative international law perspectives to inform any codification reforms. This book will be of interest to international and comparative contract law academics, as well as regulators and policy-makers.

This book will describe the development of European Community consumer law and seek to determine to what extent action by the European Community has promoted the interest of consumer protection. In doing so it will consider important areas relating to protection of the consumers economic interests and physical safety, as well as questions of access to justice. In addition to assessing the success of community consumer policy the authors will also put forward suggestions for ways in which consumer protection can be enhanced at the community level.

This is a truly international effort, and one with a strong commitment to human rights by the highly reputable authors coming from different jurisdictions! The many facets of today s consumer law are presented to the reader, including developing countries a fascinating effort in a dynamically emerging field of law! We are comprehensively informed about such bread and butter areas as advertising, unfair terms, consumer guarantees, product safety and liability, consumer credit, and redress. But traditional consumer law concepts and remedies are facing challenges in more complex areas, like services of general internet where consumers and private users should enjoy equal access to universal services , with the internet where speed must not be a pretext to eliminate standards of fair dealing, with risky investment services under the problematic paradigm shift from investor protection to investor confidence . A book to read, to think about, to work with for everybody interested in the future of consumer markets and law in a time of economic crisis! Norbert Reich, University of Bremen, Germany This is a richly interesting collection of essays, written by leading names in the field. It offers a thoroughly reliable survey of key tensions and challenges in modern consumer law and brilliantly combines thematic overview with detailed analysis. It will stimulate comparative thinking, it will provide a source of information and it will be welcomed by consumer law scholars all over the world. Stephen Weatherill, University of Oxford, UK 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.

In Rethinking EU Consumer Law, the authors analyse the development of EU consumer law on the basis of a number of clear themes, which are then traced through specific areas. Recurring themes include the artificiality of the EU’s consumer image, the problems created by the drive towards maximum harmonisation, and the unexpected effects EU Consumer Law has had on national law. The book argues that EU Consumer Law has the potential of enhancing the protecting of consumers throughout the EU and could offer a model for consumer law elsewhere in the world, but in order to unlock this potential, there needs to be a rethink with regard to the EU’s approach to consumer law and policy.