Towards a General Theory of Harm for Consumer Law

Abstract

The recent book Consumer Theories of Harm is an important contribution to consumer policy. It is the first attempt to develop theories of harm for consumer law. This essay presents the main arguments of the book (Sections 1 and 2). There are four archetypal scenarios of harm that consumer law should consider: the scam, the lemon, the shock, and the subsidy. Section 3 critically engages with the normative foundations of the analysis. Section 4 proposes to consider the shock scenario, one of the four archetypal scenarios of harm proposed by the book as the benchmark against which assess the other three scenarios. Section 5 shows the importance of searching the theories of harm latent in legislation by showing that ancillary terms in standard terms and conditions are understood by the Unfair Contract Terms Directive as an instance of the scam scenario, not of the shock scenario as proposed by the authors. Finally, Section 6 proposes additional lines of inquiry stimulated by Consumer Theories of Harm.