Consumer Protection Law Commons^™

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

Growing Tensions: Consumer Privacy And Corporate Disclosures, Megan Wischmeier Shaner

Faculty Articles

Data privacy and data security have become key issues for legislators, regulators, and individual citizens. Roughly two-thirds of Americans believe their data is being regularly tracked, monitored, and collected by companies and the government. A majority of U.S. adults also believe their data is less secure today than five years ago, expressing concerns that they have little control over how their personal information is being used and that the entities who control their data are not responsible stewards. In the absence of comprehensive federal regulation, a continuous stream of privacy statutes have been proposed at the state level. Beginning with …

America's Next "Stop Model!": Model Deletion, Jevan Hutson, Ben Winters

Articles

This Essay explores the emergence of model deletion- the compelled destruction or dispossession of certain data, algorithms, models, and associated work products created or shaped by illegal means- as a remedy, right, and requirement for harmful applications of Al and ML systems. Part I examines model deletion's emergence as a consumer protection remedy and its conception as a positive right and regulatory requirement. Part II considers the constellation of federal and state actors, such as federal and state enforcement agencies and legislative bodies, who might seek model deletion to address particular Al and ML harms. Part III underscores the need …

Regulatory Approaches To Consumer Protection In The Financial Sector And Beyond: Towards A Smart Disclosure Regime?, Nydia Remolina, Yvonne Ai-Chi Loh, David Hardoon

International Journal on Consumer Law and Practice

Consumer and data protection policies often focus on consent and information disclosure. The purpose of these regulatory strategies is the protection of consumers by reducing some contracting failures, such as asymmetries of information and a lower bargaining power, especially in transactions involving complex issues such as financial products and sensitive personal data. In the past, regulators have responded to privacy and consumer protection by adopting what this article refers to as an “imperfectly informed regime”, in which consumers do not receive full information about the risks associated with their decisions, even if they are still protected through a variety of …

Exploring The True Shade Of Green: A Critical Examination Of The Central Consumer Protection Authority’S Guidelines On Corporate Greenwashing, Sanya Darakhshan Kishwar, Vasatika Saraswat, Roshni Agarwal

International Journal on Consumer Law and Practice

The Central Consumer Protection Authority in India has recently released draft guidelines to address the issue of greenwashing by corporations. This paper closely examines these guidelines and how they might impact the deceptive environmental practices of some companies. The study contributes to the ongoing discussion about corporate responsibility in India, highlighting the role of regulations in tackling greenwashing and promoting consumer trust. The authors critically comment on the shortcomings of the guidelines, while suggesting recommendations for resolving the same.

Impact Of Social Media Influencers On Consumer Choice: A Case Study Of Reviews By Youtubers, Faisal Fasih

International Journal on Consumer Law and Practice

Consumer participation is vital for businesses, especially in online markets, because potential customers cannot physically check the product. One of the standard options is to watch the review on YouTube, a source of a host of information, including consumer-related products. However, it also provides a fertile ground for disseminating misinformation, including fake reviews of consumer goods, because the contents of the information are unverified. Fake reviews can create information asymmetry, lead to the dismissal of genuine reviews, and ultimately reduce market competition. Therefore, one would have expected that the popularity of YouTube would decrease as a source of information access. …

Empowering Consumer Rights And Community Welfare: Enhancing Corporate Accountability Through A Geographical Indication Licensing Policy, Akriti ., Sarang Sureshrao Khadkekar, Pinaki Ghosh

International Journal on Consumer Law and Practice

Geographical Indications are a unique form of intellectual property that can potentially improve social-economic welfare. The Indian GI Act is based on the concept of consumer welfare, which prevents market activities that can mislead or confuse consumers. Such confusion can be about the source of origin, the quality, or the reputation of the goods. However, several studies have shown the rampant use of GI names by unauthorized persons and Corporations, creating dangers of diluting the reputation of GI names. Such unauthorized use of GI names results in an unfair commercial advantage to these infringers. Not only that, a genuine consumer …

Against Engagement, Neil M. Richards, Woodrow Hartzog

Scholarship@WashULaw

In this Article, we focus on a key dimension of commercial surveillance by data-intensive digital platforms that is too often treated as a supporting cast member instead of a star of the show: the concept of engagement. Engagement is, simply put, a measure of time, attention, and other interactions with a service. The economic logic of engagement is simple: more engagement equals more ads watched equals more revenue. Engagement is a lucrative digital business model, but it is problematic in several ways that lurk beneath the happy sloganeering of a “free” internet.

Our goal in this Article is to isolate …

Antitrust, Amazon, And Algorithmic Auditing, Jens Frankenreiter, Abhisek Dash, Abhijnan Chakraborty, Saptarshi Ghosh, Animesh Mukherjee, Stefan Bechtold, Krishna P. Gummadi

Scholarship@WashULaw

In digital markets, antitrust law and special regulations aim to ensure that markets remain competitive despite the dominating role that digital platforms play today in everyone's life. Unlike traditional markets, market participant behavior is easily observable in these markets. We present a series of empirical investigations into the extent to which Amazon engages in practices that are typically described as self-preferencing. We discuss how the computer science tools used in this paper can be used in a regulatory environment that is based on algorithmic auditing and requires regulating digital markets at scale.

Measuring Compliance With The California Consumer Privacy Act Over Space And Time, Jens Frankenreiter, Van Tran, Aarushi Mehrotra, Marshini Chetty, Nick Feamster, Lior Strahilevitz

Scholarship@WashULaw

The widespread sharing of consumers personal information with third parties raises significant privacy concerns. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) mandates that online businesses offer consumers the option to opt out of the sale and sharing of personal information. Our study automatically tracks the presence of the opt-out link longitudinally across multiple states after the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) went into effect. We categorize websites based on whether they are subject to CCPA and investigate cases of potential non-compliance. We find a number of websites that implement the opt-out link early and across all examined states but also find …

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 …

Between The Entrepreneurial Impetus For Higher Profits And Consumer Rights Or Types Of Unfair And Misleading Commercial Practices: Insights From Bulgaria, Silviya Atanasova Topleva

International Journal on Consumer Law and Practice

The application of unfair misleading commercial practices affects the economic interests of consumers, threatening legal security and the achievement of market equilibrium. In response to these imbalances, the law builds a solid regulatory network for consumer protection. In the codification of the protection of consumer interests from unfair commercial practices, an important place is occupied by secondary legislation of the EU, and in particular Directive 2005/29/EC concerning unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices in the internal market. The article presents a classification of the types of unfair misleading commercial practices based on the regulatory framework at the European and national level. The …