Facilitating Sustainable Consumption through Private Law - call for papers

Dr Joasia Luzak (University of Exeter) and Prof Marco Loos (University of Amsterdam) are guest editors of a special issue of an open access journal Laws (by MDPI). They are inviting authors to send in their papers on the topic: 'Facilitating Sustainable Consumption through Private Law'. 

The deadline for submission of interest/ abstracts is June 30, 2021 (to j.luzak (at) exeter.ac.uk and m.b.m.loos (at) uva.nl)

The deadline for submission of full papers: October 15, 2021.

Message from the Guest Editors 

In this Special Issue, we would like to focus on the discussion of rules, which would accommodate sustainable consumption, leading to a structural change of consumer lifestyles and allowing to fulfil global commitments. We refer here to the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including specifically UN Sustainable Development Goal 12 (SDG-12), relating to sustainable production and consumption, as well as the European Commission’s New Consumer Agenda prioritising the green transition.

The contributions to this Special Issue may discuss various areas of private law that could either help empower consumers to reach for ‘the green transition’ or motivate producers and traders to use new materials, products or engage in new business practices. Any areas of private law that could help with the promotion of more sustainable consumption could be discussed in the contributions to this Special Issue, whether it would be sales or services contracts, online or offline contracts, contract or tort law, substantive or procedural rules, etc. We leave it to our contributors to decide and discuss whether and how this could be achieved, e.g. by: 

• reframing the current rules on:  
• consumer information,  
• non-conformity,  
• remedies, or 
• designing new rules around the concepts of:  
• product safety  
• product liability, or 
• banning or preventing planned obsolescence,  
• encouraging updates and upgrades of goods and digital content,  
• relating consumer rights to corporate social responsibility claims and policies.

With this Special Issue we plan to further contribute to the growing body of academic work in this area, continuing the discussion on various regulatory and self-regulatory solutions. We especially welcome contributions with an interdisciplinary angle.

euvr - New journal on European consumer and market law

Mid January saw the birth of a new journal on European consumer law: the Journal of European Consumer and Market Law, aka 'euvr' (taking the initials from its German name, the Zeitschrift für Europäisches Unternehmens- und Verbraucherrecht). The journal is edited by the Association of European Consumer Law, of which two of the contributors to this blog are members. The first issue includes an editorial by Verica Trstenjak (Advocate-General at the Court of Justice of the EU), articles on consumer credit law and the optional instrument, and a case note on CJEU Weber & Putz by the main contributor to this blog.
[To reassure readers who might sense a conflict of interests here, seeing the personal overlap of bloggers and editors/authors: no payment, force or other incentives were used to get me to advertise this journal here. Just thought it might interest you to know about the new magazine...]

The journal's 'mission statement' reads as follows:

'This new Journal aims at filling a gap in existing publications in the field of European consumer law. Its main focus is on issues of consumer law in the EU internal market. European consumer law is understood in the broadest sense including user and passenger law. The focus of the journal goes beyond the traditional understanding of consumer law as consumer protection law and includes consumer law from the perspective of businesses in the B2C market.

The emphasis lies on the debate of consumer law as it stands in a system of multilevel governance. This includes discussing issues of private as well as public law, of substantive as well as private international and procedural law, of national, international and supranational law, new regulatory instruments (e.g. uniform law, soft law, service standards) as well as questions of law making.

The journal contains articles (peer reviewed), short contributions, legislation report, case commentaries, pending cases, book reviews and events. Contributions will appear in English and/or in German.'

More information and a call for papers can be found on the euvr's website.