Law Commons^™

Preferences For Processes: The Process/Product Distinction And The Regulation Of Consumer Choice, Douglas A. Kysar

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines a conceptual distinction between product-related information (such as whether a consumer good threatens to harm its user) and process-related information (such as whether a good’s production harmed workers, animals, or the environment) that has appeared in various guises within international trade law; domestic environmental, health, and safety regulation; and constitutional commercial speech jurisprudence. This process/product distinction tends to dismiss information concerning processes as unworthy of attention from consumers or regulators, at least so long as the processes at issue do not manifest themselves in the physical or compositional characteristics of resulting end products. Proponents have offered the …

Kentucky Consumer Law Conference, Office Of Continuing Legal Education At The University Of Kentucky College Of Law

Continuing Legal Education Materials

Materials from the Kentucky Consumer Law Conference held by UK/CLE in September 2004

Small Business And The False Dichotomies Of Contract Law, Larry Garvin

The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law Working Paper Series

The article explores the classic consumer- merchant dichotomy from the vantage of small businesses. Using empirical data and the psychology, economics, and management literature, it shows that small businesses, treated like large businesses throughout most of contract and commercial law, in fact behave more like consumers. Small businesses lack the financial strength of large businesses. They generally lack the information gathering ability of large businesses. Finally, they generally are more prey to cognitive errors than are large businesses. As a result, small businesses lose in two ways. When they deal with consumers, they are presumed to have the power, information, …

Beware Buyer Power, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

The conventional antitrust wisdom is that buyer side market power or monopsony is so unusual and so rarely anticompetitive that it should not merit more than a scholarly afterthought. Moreover, these brief mentions typically say it is essentially the mirror image of seller power or that, while seller-side power is suspect since it leads to higher consumer prices, buyer-side power is usually benign, because the public should not care which layer of a distribution channel gets any potential savings that can arise. This short article discusses how buyer power can be anticompetitive. It also discusses how buyer power or monopsony …

Introduction To Symposium On Integrating New Economic Learning With Antitrust Doctrine, Jonathan Baker

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Obligation Of Legal Aid Lawyers To Champion Practice By Nonlawyers, Deborah J. Cantrell

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Denominator Blindness Effect: Accident Frequencies And The Misjudgment Of Recklessness, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

People seriously misjudge accident risks because they routinely neglect relevant information about exposure. Such risk judgments affect both personal and public policy decisions, e.g., choice of a transport mode, but also play a vital role in legal determinations, such as assessments of recklessness. Experimental evidence for a sample of 422 jury-eligible adults indicates that people incorporate information on the number of accidents, which is the numerator of the risk frequency calculation. However, they appear blind to information on exposure, such as the scale of a firm's operations, which is the risk frequency denominator. Hence, the actual observed accident frequency of …

The High Cost Of Mandatory Consumer Arbitration, Mark E. Budnitz

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Using Arbitration To Eliminate Consumer Class Actions: Efficient Business Practice Or Unconscionable Abuse?, Jean R. Sternlight, Elizabeth J. Jensen

Scholarly Works

Companies are increasingly drafting arbitration clauses worded to prevent consumers from bringing class actions against them in either litigation or arbitration. If one looks at the form contracts she receives regarding her credit card, cellular phone, land phone, insurance policies, mortgage, and so forth, most likely, the majority of those contracts include arbitration clauses, and many of those include prohibitions on class actions. Companies are seeking to use these clauses to shield themselves from class action liability, either in court or in arbitration.

This article argues that while the unconscionability doctrine offers some protections, case-by-case adjudication is a costly means …

Bankruptcy's Home Economics, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay began its life as a commentary on Elizabeth Warren’s article “The New Economics of the American Family” at the American Bankruptcy Institute's 25th Anniversary Symposium of the Bankruptcy Code in 2003. (Both the Warren article and my commentary were published in the symposium in the American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review.) “The New Economics of the American Family” was drawn in many respects from then-Professor Warren’s co-authored book, The Two Income Trap. The essay refers to both, though it puts particular emphasis on the article. The essay begins by briefly describing the basic thesis of the article-- …

Of Predatory Lending And The Democratization Of Credit: Preserving The Social Safety Net Of Informality In Small-Loan Transactions, Regina Austin

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.