Consumer Protection Law Commons^™

Feeding The Good Fire: Paths To Facilitate Native-Led Fire Management On Federal Lands, Kevin Burdet

Seattle University Law Review

In 2003, nearly twenty Native American reservations were devastated by wildfires that originated on adjacent federal lands. The San Pasqual Reservation’s entire 1,400 acres were burned along with over a third of its homes, and seventy-five percent of the Rincon Reservation was burned, taking twenty homes with it. These devastating fires, along with others in 2002, brought about the Tribal Forest Protection Act of 2004 (TFPA), which offered hope for Tribes to propose projects on bordering or adjacent federal lands and protect reservation lands in the process. Unfortunately, twenty years later, the TFPA has had a marginal effect in enabling …

The First Amendment To The Constitution, Associational Freedom, And The Future Of The Country: Alabama’S Direct Attack On The Existence Of The Naacp, Helen J. Knowles-Gardner

Seattle University Law Review

Sixty years ago, on Wednesday, April 8, 1964, Professor Harry Kalven, Jr., gave the second of three lectures at The Ohio State University College of Law Forum. These lectures were published two years later in a book entitled The Negro & the 1st Amendment. In the second lecture, Kalven distinguished between direct and indirect threats to the associational freedom of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Kalven categorized the 1958 decision in NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson as an indirect effort to control the NAACP.

With the benefit of material obtained from numerous archival sources, …

What Is In Your Tampon? Increasing Transparency In Menstrual Products, Elianna Spitzer

Seattle University Law Review

The average person who menstruates will bleed for an average of five days, every twenty-four to thirty-eight days, over several decades and could use thousands of disposable menstrual products in their lifetime. Menstrual products line retail shelves. They can be found in homes, bags, and bodies—but until 2021, manufacturers were not required to disclose the ingredients used to make these products to consumers at all. In fact, they still are not federally required to disclose menstrual product ingredients on product packaging. Instead, in recent years, changes to menstrual product labels have largely been the result of state legislation. In 2019, …

Due Process Shaped By The Present Instead Of The Past: The Needed Reinvigoration Of A Lawrence Vision Of Due Process, Azor Cole

Seattle University Law Review

The recognition of unenumerated rights, rights implied from the text of the constitution, is a political battlefield waged through law with profound implications for all Americans. Generally, there have been two prongs for an inquiry into an unenumerated constitutional right under the Fourteenth Amendment. One is to ask whether the right to be found is objectively deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition. The other is to ask whether the right to be found is fundamental to this Nation’s scheme of ordered liberty. The current Supreme Court has effectively done away with this present-day liberty analysis, saying it is …

Sneakers, The Shoes That Talk The Talk And Walk The Walk: How Jack Daniel’S Properties, Inc. V. Vip Products Left Its Footprint On Trademark Law And The Sneaker Industry, Nitya Tolani

Seattle University Law Review

As the fashion industry—including the sneaker industry housed within it—continues to go through the motions of collectively flocking out, and then collectively flocking again to the newest innovations in the world of wearables, the landscape of laws to protect and promote those innovations expands as well, mainly in the area of intellectual property law. Although copyright, trademark, and patent law can cover innovations in the fashion industry, this Note centers its analysis on trademark law. Trademark law has been through notable change in recent years because of the United States Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Jack Daniel’s Properties, Inc. v. …

Prejudice Standards In Washington’S Appellate Courts, Andrew B. Van Winkle

Seattle University Law Review

When an appellate court finds an error to have occurred during a proceeding, the error is not yet subject to correction. In order to merit a remedy, the error must have been sufficiently prejudicial to the aggrieved party’s case. Drawing the line between correctable and non-correctable errors is not an easy task, for it often requires guessing at what was in the minds of jurors and trial judges. To cope with this task, courts have devised various rules and tests for deciding whether an error was likely prejudicial or not. These standards often go by names such as “harmless error,” …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Contract-Wrapped Property, Danielle D'Onfro

Scholarship@WashULaw

For nearly two centuries, the law has allowed servitudes that “run with” real property while consistently refusing to permit servitudes attached to personal property. That is, owners of land can establish new, specific requirements for the property that bind all future owners—but owners of chattels cannot. In recent decades, however, firms have increasingly begun relying on contract provisions that purport to bind future owners of chattels. These developments began in the context of software licensing, but they have started to migrate to chattels not encumbered by software. Courts encountering these provisions have mostly missed their significance, focusing instead on questions …

Reducing Food Scarcity: The Benefits Of Urban Farming, S.A. Claudell, Emilio Mejia

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Urban farming can enhance the lives of communities and help reduce food scarcity. This paper presents a conceptual prototype of an efficient urban farming community that can be scaled for a single apartment building or an entire community across all global geoeconomics regions, including densely populated cities and rural, developing towns and communities. When deployed in coordination with smart crop choices, local farm support, and efficient transportation then the result isn’t just sustainability, but also increasing fresh produce accessibility, optimizing nutritional value, eliminating the use of ‘forever chemicals’, reducing transportation costs, and fostering global environmental benefits.

Imagine Doris, who is …

Hidden Contracts, Shmuel I. Becher, Uri Benoliel

BYU Law Review

Transparency is a promising means for enhancing democratic values, countering corruption, and reducing power abuse. Nonetheless, the potential of transparency in the domain of consumer contracts is untapped. This Article suggests utilizing the power of transparency to increase consumer access to justice, better distribute technological gains between businesses and consumers, and deter sellers from breaching their consumer contracts while exploiting consumers’ inferior position.

In doing so, this Article focuses on what we dub “Hidden Contracts.” Part I conceptualizes the idea of hidden contracts. It first defines hidden contracts as consumer form contracts that firms unilaterally modify and subsequently remove from …

Dark Patterns In A Bright World : An Analysis Of The Indian Consumer Legal Architecture, Sandeep Sharma J., Ishita Sharma Dr.

International Journal on Consumer Law and Practice

Dark patterns’ are consumer targeted marketing strategies that capitalize on cognitive biases of consumers’ propelling them to make decisions, contrary to their intended preferences. The term dark patterns coined by user designer Harry Bignull has gained traction recently, due to its correlation with psychological responses that are produced through nudges that are unaligned to the consumers’ original preference. The consumer responses elicited through the use of such dubious nudges have a direct correlation with the way human brain functions. These covert strategies employed by digital marketing platforms capitalize through behavioral science, aimed at their economic growth compromising the consumers’ free, …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Federal Data Privacy Regulation: Do Not Expect An American Gdpr, Matt Buckley

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Legal Representation And The Metaverse: The Ethics Of Practicing In Multiple Realities, Madeline Brom

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Badges Of Honor: Professional Conduct, Consumer Protection, And Accolades In Lawyer Advertising, Kiren Dosanjh Zucker, Bruce Zucker

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Welcome Address, Lauren Mckenzie

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Confidentiality Clauses In Settlement Agreements After The Consumer Review Fairness Act, Wayne Barnes

Faculty Scholarship

Online commerce has skyrocketed in recent years, and shoppers are purchasing goods or services online in greater numbers every year. The COVID-19 pandemic has only hastened the trend. One significant aspect of online shopping is the presence of consumer reviews posted by prior purchasers of goods or services, describing their experience with the products, the services and/or the selling merchant. A vast majority of online shoppers say that they rely on these reviews to help inform their purchasing decisions. Positive reviews can be tremendously beneficial to a business’ profitability, whereas negative reviews can be equally detrimental. Users of the internet …

The Reluctant Lawmaker. The European Union And The Regulation Of Gambling Between The Principle Of Free Circulation Of Services And Member States Prerogatives, Nadia Coggiola Ph.D

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

Abstract

Although the European Union legislator is generally very keen to rely primarily and sometimes even exclusively on economic considerations, and therefore to generally protect consumers’ interests, this attitude is largely different when gambling issues are a stake.

In fact, even if it is generally undisputed, also by the same European Union legislator, that authorized gambling contracts are to be considered as consumers’ contracts, when facing the regulation of gambling contracts, the European Union often restrains from using all of its legislative powers.

As a consequence, the European legislation on consumer’s contracts generally explicitly exclude from its application gambling contracts, …

Contracting As A Class, Caleb N. Griffin

BYU Law Review

Contract law is stuck in a loop of path dependency and stale precedent. Its metaphors, like “the meeting of the minds,” are today laughably implausible. Its values, like “consent,” have been stripped of any real meaning. No one reads or understands the overwhelming majority of contracts to which they agree. And no one should. Reading them is meaningless, because it simply does not matter what they say. Individuals must agree to them – indeed, are effectively forced to agree to them – if they wish to participate in the modern world.

Modern digital contracting is not a collaborative process. Today, …

Urgensi Pengawasan Terhadap Penyedia Jasa Pengiriman Dalam Kegiatan E-Commerce: Studi Komparasi Indonesia Dengan Malaysia, Lydia Azzahro Silparensi, Abdul Salam

Lex Patrimonium

Delivery service providers are a role that is needed, especially with the increase in e-commerce activity. However, the implementation of courier services is still lacking in overcoming these problems. As an effort to increase supervision while adapting it to consumer needs, an analysis was carried out using a normative juridical method by comparing the two institutions between Indonesia and Malaysia. Institutions in Malaysia are different from Indonesia which are under the auspices of the Ministry of Communication and Informatics, that the Malaysian Institution known as the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission is an institution whose role is to oversee communication …

Beyond Section 230 Liability For Facebook, Nancy S. Kim

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

In October 2021, a former Facebook employee, Frances Haugen, publicly revealed that the company's internal research documented harms that its products caused some of its users. The company’s response was sadly predictable. It questioned the reliability of Haugen’s testimony, asserted its commitment to doing the right thing, and then diverted the public’s attention by changing its name to Meta. The company’s deny-and-distract tactics were, by now, all too familiar and provided few answers.

More than any other platform company, Facebook has found itself at the center of controversy. Its advertisement-supported business model relies upon user engagement which means that …

The Evolution Of Chapter 11: How Corporate Restructuring Has Evolved And Its Important Role In The Recovery Of A Struggling Economy, Eduardo Cervantes

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Covid-19 Vs. Constitution; Limited Government's Unlimited Response, John A. Losurdo

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The "No License, No Chips" Policy: When A Refusal To Deal Becomes Reasonable, Sheng Tong

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Dark Triad: Private Benefits Of Control, Voting Caps And The Mandatory Takeover Rule, Jorge Brito Pereira

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Just Kidding? The Problem Of Unenforceable Waivers Of Liability, Anthony J. Sebok

Articles

No abstract provided.

When Congress Passes The Buck: How Russia’S Invasion Of Ukraine Exposed Flaws In Granting The President Sanctioning Powers, Artem M. Joukov, Samantha M. Caspar

Seattle University Law Review

The United States (U.S.) Constitution provides few limitations on endowing the Executive Branch with powers to govern foreign trade, which was initially granted to the Legislature. In a world where global trade dominates, the power over foreign trade can be more important than the power over domestic matters. Leaving unrestrained trade authority to the Executive Branch may cause hazards for Americans and foreigners alike. Russia’s war in Ukraine demonstrates the flaws in permitting the Executive Branch to unilaterally sanction foreign states. This Article demonstrates how reactive Executive Branch policies infringed on the welfare and safety of American citizens and foreigners …

Pedaling Backwards: Examining The King County Board Of Health’S Choice To Repeal Its Bicycle Helmet Law, Schuyler M. Peters

Seattle University Law Review

In Part I, this Comment will explain the Helmet Law itself and the timeline that ultimately led to its repeal. Part II will focus on the positive impact of the Helmet Law, the dangers associated with the repeal, why the repeal should not have occurred in the manner it did, and what societal costs stem from the BOH’s decision. Part III will address the actions that must be taken to revoke this repeal and the reasons behind these alternative pathways, including an Equity Impact Review study specifically on the consequences of repeal, a collaborative outreach program to bring helmets to …

Modernizing Notice Of Breach Rules To Preserve Contract Remedies, Stephen Plass

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Recently, the legal community has scrutinized the capacity of mandatory arbitration rules to deter or foreclose claims for breach of contract. But little attention has been paid to express and constructive notice of breach rules that are just as effective at foreclosing contractual remedies. While four-year statutes of limitations are typically viewed as the default cutoff time for breach of contract claims, contracting parties, particularly buyers of goods, must act much sooner to preserve their legal remedies. It is now common practice for sellers to require notice of breach within days or weeks of their performance as an express condition …