This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
The module addresses the regulation of consumer markets. This module is aimed at students who wish to have an understanding of substantive law, policies and institutional framework concerning the regulation of consumer markets.
Total study hours: 300
Contact hours: 40
Private study hours: 260
All undergraduate Law programmes including Joint Honours.
Main assessment methods
The module will be assessed by 30% coursework and 70% examination as follows:
Essay, 3000 words (30%)
Exam, 3 hours (70%)
Reassessment methods
The module will be reassessed by like-for-like reassessment of failed individual components of assessment.
Blackstones Statutes on Commercial and Consumer Law 2017-2018 (Oxford University Press).
Mathew Hilton, Consumerism in 20th Century Britain (Cambridge, CUP, 2003).
G. Howells & S. Weatherill, Consumer Protection Law (Ashgate, 2d ed. 2005).
G. Howells, H. Micklitz & T. Wilhelmsson, European Fair Trading Law (Ashgate, 2006).
I Ramsay, Consumer Law and Policy: Text Cases and Materials on Regulating Consumer Markets (Oxford, 3rd edition, Hart Publishing)
C Scott & J Black, Cranston's Consumers and the Law (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 3d ed. 2000).
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
The intended subject specific learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module, students will be able to:
1. Demonstrate knowledge of the relevant common law, statutory and non-statutory sources in the area of consumer law and to research
and apply that knowledge to concrete fact situations.
2. Demonstrate an understanding of the standard policy arguments and frameworks of consumer law, and to apply and critique them in
concrete policy problems.
3. Appreciate the role of consumer law and policy within the "new regulatory state" in the UK.
4. Demonstrate an awareness of the different forms of legal regulation of consumer market transactions (e.g. private law, administrative
regulation, "soft law", harnessing market incentives), and their strengths and weaknesses.
5. Assess claims about the progressive potential of consumer law and its relationship to broader social policies such as addressing social
exclusion.
6. Appreciate the scope of EU consumer law and policy and its effects on UK law.
The intended generic learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module, students will be able to:
1. Effectively locate primary and secondary legal and policy sources and to apply them to specific policy and legal issues.
2. Critically evaluate an area of law both doctrinally and in terms of its socio-economic consequences.
3. Recognise potential alternative solutions to particular problems and make a reasoned choice between them.
4. Formulate and sustain a complex argument, supporting it with appropriate evidence
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