Consumer Law

Consumer protection law or consumer law is considered an area of public law that regulates private law relationships between individual consumers and the businesses that sell those goods and services. Consumer protection covers a wide range of topics, including but not necessarily limited to product liability, privacy rights, unfair business practices, fraud, misrepresentation, and other consumer/business interactions.

Such laws deal with credit repair, debt repair, product safety, service contracts, bill collector regulation, pricing, utility turnoffs, consolidation, personal loans that may lead to bankruptcy and much more.

United States

In the United States a variety of laws at both the federal or state levels regulate consumer affairs. Among them are the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, Truth in Lending Act, Fair Credit Billing Act, and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Federal consumer protection laws are mainly enforced by the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice.

At the state level, many states have a Department of Consumer Affairs devoted to regulating certain industries and protecting consumers who use goods and services from those industries.

European Union

The European Union has been very active in the field of consumer protection, producing a considerable volume of Directives which require member states to regulate consumer protection to a particular standard (which may or may not allow a higher standard of regulation).

A very important innovation has been the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive. Also Directives on Unfair Contract Terms (93/13/EC) and Electronic Commerce (2000/13/EC).

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