Contract law when the poor pay more

Spooner, Joseph ORCID: 0000-0001-5184-3022 (2024) Contract law when the poor pay more. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 44 (2). 257 - 285. ISSN 0143-6503

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Abstract

Taking inequality as a key challenge of our time, this article aims to highlight consumer markets, and their underpinning legal ground rules, as important contributors to inequitable wealth distributions. It illustrates how product design, as manifested in contractual terms, can allow firms to evade competition and divert resources upwards along society's wealth distribution curve. It then highlights the contestable legality of certain pricing practices, such as 'contingent charges', and the challenge they pose to fundamental principles of contract law. An in-depth view of the 2015 case of Beavis v ParkingEye argues that the UK Supreme Court has validated contingent pricing models in a manner unsupported by traditional contractual reasoning and unjustified by contemporary market failure analysis. The article asks contract law to confront the reality that it shapes market distributions in economically and politically significant ways, and appeals for greater scrutiny of the contribution of contract law adjudication to inequality.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2024 The Author(s)
Divisions:	Law
Subjects:	K Law
Date Deposited:	20 Feb 2024 10:36
Last Modified:	16 Nov 2024 19:06
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/122074

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