Consumer Protection Law Commons^™

Consumer News: Fertility Tracking Apps, Dna Testing, And... Vending Machines? Developments In Ftc And State Protections On Certain Health Information, Kiana Baharloo

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Loyola Consumer Law Review

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Declining Motor Fuel Tax Revenue Due To Electric Vehicles And Increased Fuel Efficiency, Madeline Melby

Loyola Consumer Law Review

The emergence of electric vehicles and increased fuel efficiency within traditional, internal combustion automobiles is an important step in combating climate change. Many state and federal officials have proposed different resolutions to encourage these types of cars and reduce carbon emissions. However, based on the growing number of electric vehicles, hybrids, and overall, more-fuel efficient vehicles, drivers are no longer purchasing fuel at historic levels, and this is effectively curbing the tax revenue once collected at the gas pump on both a state and federal level. Although these vehicles still contribute to the wear and tear associated with driving on …

Exploring The Role Of Technology In Consumer Law Enforcement, Liz Coll, Christine Riefa

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Antitrust Privacy, Revisited, Gregory Day

Loyola Consumer Law Review

When large technology companies, known as "Big Tech," became prevalent, they engendered tremendous debate in antitrust circles. On one hand, many of the companies seemed to vanquish competition using methods that could hardly be described as fair or meritorious. But the problem with harnessing antitrust enforcement was that most tech markets appear to be innovative, high-quality, and cheaply priced (one could even say "free"). Since anticompetitive conduct must render high prices, diminished innovation, eroded quality, or otherwise harm "consumer welfare" to offend antitrust law, Big Tech was able to dodge antitrust scrutiny-for a while anyway.

Given the seemingly anticompetitive behaviors …

Privacy, Attention, And Competition. How To Apply Competition Law To Big Tech Companies? The European Perspective, Lukasz Grzejdziak

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Afterpay Hangover, Nathalie Martin, David Lynn

Loyola Consumer Law Review

Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) companies such as Afterpay, Klarna, Affirm, and Zilch, have grown faster than any other payment method during the pandemic and the BNPL payment method is expected to continue to grow exponentially well into the future. Under BNPL arrangements, consumers buy relatively moderately-priced items online and pay for them in installments, typically without interest. BNPL companies earn revenues from merchant fees. and late fees assessed to consumers, rather than traditional interest. Because consumers do not pay fees or interest if the scheduled installments are paid on time, these companies argue that they do not fall within …

A Hot Topic: Is The Fda’S Approach To Sunscreen Regulation Failing Consumers?, Haley Westman

Seattle University Law Review

This Note suggests a better balance between allowing sunscreen innovation and protecting the public from unsafe products. Part I of this Note will review the factual background of the public’s attention to sunscreen, explain the current sunscreen issues in the news, and highlight the different actors involved in the growing discourse surrounding sunscreen. Part I will also show that the actors involved in the sunscreen industry—scientific researchers, social media influencers, and the public at large—have considerable influence on consumers’ trust in sunscreen, their buying habits, and the FDA’s approach to sunscreen regulation. Part II of this Note will outline the …

Esg Ratings: A Blind Spot For U.S. Securities Regulation, Alexander Coley

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Providers of “Environmental, Social, and Governance” (ESG) ratings have emerged as prominent informational intermediaries in the sustainable finance ecosystem. The key players are familiar names such as Moody’s, Morningstar, MSCI and S&P. In recent years, investors, financial markets observers and academics have raised serious doubts about the value and integrity of ESG ratings, pointing to lack of reliability and comparability and risks of conflicts of interest and abuse, including the potential for “greenwashing.”

ESG ratings are now in the crosshairs of financial regulators, particularly, in Europe. However, the regulatory discourse has failed to contend with risks arising from the use …

Fda As Food System Stewards, Margot J. Pollans, Matthew F. Watson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) is one of the primary regulators of the U.S. food system, yet it all but ignores the food system's vast environmental footprint. Although the agency is not technically an environmental agency, it could and should view redressing the food system's significant environmental footprint as part of its health and safety mission. In this Article, we review FDA's history of National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) compliance. This history affirms our hypothesis that FDA does not view its own work as environmental. The review, along with assessment of some of FDA's core food programs, reveals that …

Defining And Demystifying Automated Decision Systems, Rashida Richardson

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Consumer Law's Equity Gap, Vijay Raghavan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Rise Of 5g Technology: How Internet Privacy And Protection Of Personal Data Is A Must In An Evolving Digital Landscape, Justin Rabine

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

The Application Of The Right To Be Forgotten In The Machine Learning Context: From The Perspective Of European Laws, Zeyu Zhao

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

The right to be forgotten has been evolving for decades along with the progress of different statutes and cases and, finally, independently enacted by the General Data Protection Regulation, making it widely applied across Europe. However, the related provisions in the regulation fail to enable machine learning systems to realistically forget the personal information which is stored and processed therein.

This failure is not only because existing European rules do not stipulate standard codes of conduct and corresponding responsibilities for the parties involved, but they also cannot accommodate themselves to the new environment of machine learning, where specific information can …

Accreditation Information Produced By United States Law Schools To The American Bar Association Should Be Made Available To The Public From Both Law And Policy Perspectives, Henry Webb, Patrick R. Baker, Kaleb Byars

Loyola Consumer Law Review

This article argues that, from a legal perspective, the American Bar Association ("ABA") is the functional equivalent of a government agency and so is subject to the United States Freedom of Information Act. Under Soucie v. David and related cases, the fact that the ABA has the final decision-making authority to decide whether a United States law school is or is not to be accredited renders it the functional equivalent of a government agency, and the ABA's refusal to make available to the public the voluminous amount of important information produced to the ABA by law schools going through the …

Regulation "Best Interest's" Reduction Of Consumer Access To Investment Advice, Justin Deffenbacher

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Failures Of Electric Utility Regulation In Illinois And The Case For Public Ownership, Jackson Paller

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reconceptualizing Behaviorally Informed Consumer Law And Policy, Martin Brenncke

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

What Is Consumer Protection For?, Luke Herrine

Loyola Consumer Law Review

When law and economics barreled its way into consumer protection scholarship two score years ago, it brought with it the consumer sovereignty framework: an approach to analysis in which actual markets are compared to an ideal market in which consumers optimize exogenous welfare functions by choosing between optimally competitive sellers. Even after two decades of behavioralist critique and even with increasingly critical perspectives taking root since the Global Financial Crisis, this consumer sovereignty ideal continues to serve as both a descriptive and normative baseline for consumer protection scholarship. This Article argues that it is time to reconsider the consumer sovereignty …

The Tiktok Union: Unionization In The Age Of New Media, Sara Shiffman

Loyola Consumer Law Review

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA) is the cornerstone of employee's right to organize, collectively bargain and take collective action. As the act has been reviewed by the Supreme Court as well as the National Labor Relations Board, it has been seen as somewhat flexible, particularly when it comes to technology and how it can be used to for employee organization and communication. But as the labor market has shifted to a more technology based work-for-hire model, are those who choose to take part in new media, specifically influencer marketing technically employees entitled to the same rights and …

Table Of Contents, Loyola Consumer Law Review

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Deficiencies In The Disclosures Of Privacy Policies And In User Choice, Scott Jordan, Siddharth Narasimhan, Jina Hong

Loyola Consumer Law Review

Development of a comprehensive legal privacy framework in the United States should be based on identification of the common deficiencies of privacy policies. We attempt to delineate deficiencies by critically analyzing the privacy policies of mobile apps, application suites, social networks, Internet Service Providers, and Internet-of- Things devices. Whereas many studies have examined readability of privacy policies, few have specifically identified the information that should be provided in privacy policies but is not.

Privacy legislation invariably starts a definition of personally identifiable information. We find that privacy policies' definitions of personally identifiable information are far too restrictive, excluding information that …

Illuminating Manipulative Design: From "Dark Patterns" To Information Asymmetry And The Repression Of Free Choice Under The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, Wen-Ting Yang, Mark Leiser

Loyola Consumer Law Review

Dark patterns' are defined as 'tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn't mean to, like buying or signing up for something.' The term describes 'deceptive' and 'manipulative' techniques implemented when designing an app, website, or platform to change a user's behaviour in a way that would not have happened without the dark pattern. Yet much of the academic scholarship on the regulation of manipulative design has focused on privacy and data protection legislation. This article identifies seventeen common types of 'dark patterns'. It facilitates critical, legal, and regulatory dialogue by proposing a new …

Misleading Ai: Regulatory Strategies For Algorithmic Transparency In Technologies Augmenting Consumer Decision-Making, Jeannie Marie Paterson

Loyola Consumer Law Review

Increasingly, consumers' decisions about what to buy are mediated through digital tools promoted as using "AI", "data" or "algorithms" to assist consumers in making decisions. These kinds of digital information intermediaries include such diverse technologies as recommender systems, comparison sites, virtual voice assistants, and chatbots. They are promoted as effective and efficient ways of assisting consumers making decisions in the face of otherwise insurmountable volumes of information. But such tools also hold the potential to mislead consumers, amongst other possible harms, including about their capacity, efficacy, and identity. Most consumer protection regimes contain broad and flexible prohibitions on misleading conduct …

Misplaced Trust, Failure Of Contract, And The Need To Create Robust Options For Consumers, Anjanette H. Raymond, Inna Kouper

Loyola Consumer Law Review

Platform and application 'marketplaces' (app stores) serve an important function for the consumer. The 'marketplace' serves a single point of choice for applications that will be downloaded, and used, on either the apple or android cell phone. Over time, consumers have been reliant- almost dependent on these marketplaces. One can easily imagine, consumers trust the host, they trust the marketplace, they trust the ongoing updates and other technology 'fixes' when their applications begin to fail- one is undoubtedly aware of the loyalty that exists to these brands and marketplace hosts. Exercising full control, app stores engender extreme loyalty and high …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Skating Past Liability Under The Tcpa: Robocalls And Unsolicited Texts And E-Mails, Julissa R. Rachor

Seattle University Law Review

This Note argues that the applicability of Telephone Consumer Protection Act's (TCPA) autodialer provision should be interpreted broadly to include calls made on many types of dialing equipment.

Part I of this Note offers a brief history of the TCPA and autodialers. Part II examines the FCC’s Orders that interpret the TCPA’s autodialer provision, and Part III assesses the varying interpretations of the provision by the circuit courts. Part IV reviews the general facts and procedural history of Duguid, and the Court’s interpretation of the autodialers provision. Last, Part V examines current efforts offered by Congress and potential next …

Fit For Its Ordinary Purpose: Implied Warranties And Common Law Duties For Consumer Finance Contracts, Edward J. Janger, Susan Block-Lieb

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Illusory Privacy, Thomas Haley

Indiana Law Journal

For decades, regulators, consumer advocates, and privacy theorists have grappled with one of privacy’s most important questions: how to protect private information that consumers unwittingly give away with the click of an “I accept” button. Reform efforts remain mired in a morass of text, focusing on the increasing volume and complexity of firms’ terms of service and privacy policies. This Article moves beyond such existing approaches. By analyzing terms of service and privacy policies from hundreds of top websites—which this Article calls “platform terms”—this Article demonstrates that the prevailing “notice and consent” paradigm of privacy regulation cannot provide meaningful protection. …

Cannabis Derivatives And Trademark Registration: The Case Of Delta-8-Thc, W. Michael Schuster

Indiana Law Journal

The legal environment surrounding the cannabis industry is ambiguous and constantly changing. While cannabis is prohibited under federal law, a 2018 statute legalized a variant of the cannabis plant (“hemp”) that is low in its most common intoxicating agents. Recognizing this, entrepreneurs began to process hemp to extract and sell chemicals contained therein. Included in this trend is the extraction of Delta-8 Tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ8-THC)—a psychoactive drug with an increasing market presence in states where most cannabis (e.g., “marijuana”) is illegal.

As competition in the Δ8-THC field emerged, firms sought to distinguish their wares through brand recognition and federal trademark registration. …