Consumer Contracts
This Restatement seeks to clarify how the courts have applied contract law embodied in the Restatement of the Law Second, Contracts, to transactions that either were not contemplated at the time the earlier Restatement was completed (and therefore not addressed), like the purchase of software licenses and all online transactions, or that became a more significant part of the economy since that time. Consumer contracts present a fundamental challenge to the law of contracts, arising from the asymmetry in information, sophistication, and stakes between the parties to these contracts: the business and the consumers. This Restatement is organized into the following Sections:
1. Definitions, Scope, and Outline
2. Adoption of Standard Contract Terms
3. Adoption of a Modification of Standard Contract Terms
4. Interpretation and Construction of Consumer Contracts
5. Discretionary Obligations
6. Unconscionability
7. Deception
8. Affirmations of Fact and Promises that Are Part of the Consumer Contract
9. Standard Contract Terms and the Parol-Evidence Rule
10. Effects of Derogation from Mandatory Provisions
Reporters
Oren Bar-Gill
Reporter, Restatement of the Law, Consumer Contracts
Oren Bar-Gill is the William J. Friedman and Alicia Townsend Friedman Professor of Law and Economics at Harvard Law. His scholarship focuses on the law and economics of contracts and contracting.
Omri Ben-Shahar
Reporter, Restatement of the Law, Consumer Contracts
Omri Ben-Shahar is the Leo and Eileen Herzel Professor of Law and Kearney Director of the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics at University of Chicago Law School. He teaches contracts, sales, trademark law, insurance law, consumer law, e-commerce, food law, law and economics, and game theory and the law. He writes primarily in the fields of contract law and consumer protection.
Florencia Marotta-Wurgler
Reporter, Restatement of the Law, Consumer Contracts
Florencia Marotta-Wurgler is a professor of law at New York University School of Law and the director of NYU Law Abroad in Buenos Aires. Her teaching and research interests are contracts, consumer privacy, electronic commerce, and law and economics. Her published research has addressed various problems associated with standard form contracts online, such as the effectiveness of disclosure regimes, delayed presentation of terms, and whether people read the fine print.
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