The Use of Marketing Knowledge in Formulating and Enforcing Consumer Protection Policy

The purpose of this first chapter of the handbook is to discuss how the findings and approaches offered by the marketing discipline are used in consumer protection policy

The Law of Deception: A Research Agenda

The law of deception is the body of laws that address acts and omissions that wrongfully cause others to hold false beliefs. So defined, the law of deception cuts across traditional doctrinal boundaries. It encompasses the torts of deceit and defamation, false advertising laws, labeling requirements, securities fraud and disclosure regulations, criminal fraud, perjury statutes, and a host of other generic and more targeted laws. This essay suggests that the law of deception constitutes a coherent body of law, and identifies four salient questions about it. The questions are these: First, within the law of deception one finds several different approaches to interpreting potentially deceptive communications. These include highly contextualist approaches (e.g., the tort of deceit), more restrictive literal-meaning rules (federal perjury law), and occasionally default legal meanings (the FTC’s reasonable basis rule). One set of questions concerns when and why which interpretive approach is appropriate. A second set of questions concerns legally salient harms. Laws of deception can be designed to protect those who might be deceived (e.g., negligent misrepresentation), those about whom a lie is told (defamation), honest competitors (false advertising laws), and credible communication more generally (as the Stolen Valor Act attempted). A theory of the law of deception should disaggregate these distinct purposes and evaluate the justifications for and design implications of each. A third set of questions concerns the relationship between deception and consent. Although deception sometimes vitiates consent (in the torts of battery and trespass, in contract law, in fourth amendment searches, and in rape law), it does not always do so. And the line between vitiating and non-vitiating deception shifts across different laws. This too demands explanation. Finally, sometimes the law permits parties to contract out of liability for deception (e.g., “big boy” letters), effectively consenting to what would otherwise be deceptive behavior. A theory of the law of deception should also provide an account when, why and how parties are able to contract out of laws of deception. These are not the only interesting questions one might ask about the law of deception. Nor does this essay attempt to answer them. The goal is to make the case for thinking about the law of deception as a whole, and to suggest some directions for further research

It Depends on What the Meaning of False is: Falsity and Misleadingness in Commercial Speech Doctrine

While scholarship regarding the Supreme Court\u27s noncommercial speech doctrine has often focused on the level of protection for truthful, non-misleading commercial speech, scholars have paid little attention to the exclusion of false or misleading commercial speech from all First Amendment protection. Examining the underpinnings of the false and misleading speech exclusion illuminates the practical difficulties that abolishing the commercial speech doctrine would pose. Through a series of fact patterns in trademark and false advertising cases, this piece demonstrates that defining what is false or misleading is often debatable. If commercial speech were given First Amendment protection, consumer protection and First Amendment protection would be at odds. Rebutting the idea that constitutionally protected commercial speech could effectively address consumer abuses through fraud statues and would not be offensive to the First Amendment, the piece explains that subjecting commercial speech to First Amendment scrutiny would almost completely contract the scope of false advertising law and erode consumer protection. The piece concludes that while excluding commercial speech from constitutional protection has real costs, we are better off in a system that regulates false and misleading commercial speech without heightened First Amendment scrutiny

THE NEXT GENERATION OF GREENWASH: DIMINISHING CONSUMER CONFUSION THROUGH A NATIONAL ECO-LABELING PROGRAM

Since the 1990\u27s there has been a continuously growing movement among advertisers to appeal to consumers by touting how environmentally friendly their products are. This note addresses the prominence of misleading and deceptive environmental claims that have prompted appeals for improved federal regulation. Specifically, the Note focuses on the emerging trend of carbon advertising and national and international models that provide guidance on preventing deception. Part I conveys the current status of environmental advertising and the necessary background principles for establishing regulations. Part II details major criticisms of the current environmental advertising guidelines and proposed models for restructuring environmental advertising regulations. Finally, Part III proposes a voluntary national eco-labeling program that will address the current criticisms and improve consumer confidence in environmentally-beneficial product purchases

False Advertising Law and New Private Law

This chapter, which will appear in the Oxford Handbook of New Private Law, examines the extent to which US false advertising law can be viewed as part of the private law. Its working hypothesis is that that although it can be helpful to distinguish private from public law, there is not a sharp border between the two regions. Laws that fall on the private side of the divide can be designed in light of purposes and principles commonly associated with public law, and vice versa. False advertising law provides an example. Despite the fact that it is commonly classified as public law, one can find in it structures, functions, and values commonly associated with private law. The structural features include horizontal duties, transfer remedies, private enforcement, and judge-made rules. False advertising law is unusual in that, viewed through a private law lens, it imposes on advertisers one duty owed to two distinct categories of persons. The duty not to engage in deceptive advertising is owed both to consumers, who might be deceived by an advertisement, and to honest competitors, who might lose sales as a result of consumer deception. And the duties it imposes on advertisers differ from analogous or ancestral common law torts. Rather than a duty not to lie or utter falsehoods, advertisers have a responsibility to consumers not to cause them false beliefs. Rather than a duty not to disparage another business or its products, advertisers have a duty to competitors to play by the rules of the marketplace. That said, advertisers’ obligations to consumers and to competitors can both be understood in ethical terms familiar to the private law. This is not to deny the differences from other areas of private law. US false advertising law lives in statutes and regulations; it is enforced by federal agencies and state attorneys general; and its rules can seem designed more to promote consumer welfare and market efficiency than to enforce interpersonal obligations or compensate for wrongful losses. And there are practical impediments to consumer lawsuits, consumer oriented remedies, and adjudicative resolution of false advertising claims. But false advertising law shows its private law roots, even if its branches extend beyond them