M-EPLI Projects

Ongoing projects

Using AI for consumer protection – creating AI based persona for mystery shopping

Researcher
Caroline Cauffman, Pedro Hernández Serrano

Type of the project
NWA Idea Generator

Main issue(s) addressed
Creation of persona for consumer protection

Duration
1 September 2020 - 31 August 2021

Short description
The Consumer protection cooperation regulation allows consumer authorities to conduct mystery shopping, meaning that a consumer authority may pretend to be a consumer with certain characteristics in order to find out how the (online) seller treats the consumer and, in particular, whether one consumer gets different prices, different advertising etc. than another consumer based on eg. his characterisation as a deal hunter or a negligent shopper. These selling practices are made possible by personalisation based on big data mining and manipulative techniques that often cross the line of the prohibition of unfair commercial practices and infringe the rights of consumers.

Detection of these practices requires the creation of personas, fake identities with certain characteristics which the consumer authority can use. The manual creation of persona is a time intensive exercise.

When discussing consumer law enforcement with the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM), its director of consumer affairs indicated his desire to automatically generate personas based on big (consumer) data and have a bot impersonating these personas doing the mystery shopping. Although the ACM has an e-hub, it does not have the expertise for this. Brainstorming with computer scientists of my University, led to the conclusion that such a tool raises challenging questions both from a legal and a technical perspective. 

Therefore we agreed with the ACM to carry out a feasibility study for such a tool to see how we can tackle this issue.

The impact of 'free' digital offers on individual behavior and its implications for consumer and data protection laws

Researcher 
Monika Leszczynska

Type of the project
MSCA-IF project

Main issue(s) addressed
The impact of 'free' digital offers on individual behavior and its implications for consumer and data protection laws

Duration


Short description
Many online services and products are offered ‘free’ of charge but in exchange for personal data. Research shows that consumers overvalue the benefits and undervalue the non-monetary costs of zero-price products. Yet, it remains unknown whether offering ‘free’ digital content in exchange for personal data distorts consumer decisions about 1) entering into a transaction, 2) sharing personal data, and 3) enforcing contractual and data protection rights. These questions are important because digital content, even this for ‘free’, might involve certain hazards. For instance, it might be defective causing detriment to its users or consumers’ personal data might be misused. In this project, I will provide evidence on consumer reactions to digital content offered at a zero price by conducting online experiments, in which individuals will perform a real effort task and decide whether to use an application that can help them solve the task.

This application will be offered in a premium and a cheaper basic version supplied in exchange for personal data. In separate treatments, I will manipulate the price of the two versions - decrease the price of the basic version from a small amount to zero and change the price of the premium version accordingly. I will observe whether reducing the price of the basic version to zero influences participants choices on which application to use and whether to provide personal data in exchange. I will further introduce a failure in the basic version and measure whether participants complain and request deletion of their personal data depending on the price of the application. Next, I will test whether interventions proposed by legal scholars (e.g., informing users that their personal data constitute counter performance) change these decisions. Finally, based on these data I will develop arguments contributing to legal discussions in consumer and data protection law and suggest solutions that will improve consumer welfare and privacy protection.

The Impact of Non-Monetary Relief on Decision-Making

Researcher
Gijs van Dijck 

Type of the project
Research

Main issue(s) addressed
The Impact of Non-Monetary Relief on Decision-Making

Duration

Short description

Research includes the question whether non-monetary relief such as apologies increases the likelihood of adverse liability determinations, and whether having obtained non-monetary relief at the fault stage makes it less likely to claim damages on the compenation level.

Global Normativities: Risks and Opportunities of Globalization Process

Researcher 
Mark Kawakami

Type of the project
SectorPlan Research

Main issue(s) addressed
Global Normativities: Risks and Opportunities of Globalization Process

Duration

Short description
Research on incentivizing prosocial behaviors in companies and their stakeholders through soft power/soft law instruments.

Documents, data, derivatives: Law and the infrastructure of global production

Researcher
Anna Beckers 

Type of the project
Research/Sector plan research

Main issue(s) addressed
Documents, data, derivatives: Law and the infrastructure of global production​

Duration
 

Short description
I am interested in the role of the law in global value chains (GVC). The structure and geography of GVCs is already an establishd research topic in social science disciplines ranging from political economy, economic geography to anthropology. With the trend of imposing obligations on lead firms to organise their global production patterns, but also evolving global private regulation within GVCs, it is also legal scholars that seek to understand GVCs from a legal perspective. Taking note of these developments, my aim is to better understand the contribution of the law, in particular private law, to the legal construction of global value chains. For this purpose, I conduct legal research on substantive private law and private international law categories with a view to understanding how these legal rules contingently structure and support the way in which global value chains operates and, as a result, the potential of the law to restructure them. My research builds on the assumption that legal research requires a fundamental re-conceptualization of global production as a basis for regulating them appropriately. Currently, legal research defines GVCs in an incomplete manner and, as a result, overlooks important legal rules that are relevant for understanding how global production is organised.

Concretely, legal research portrays GVCs as de-territorialized chains of contracts under the influence of a nationally incorporated chain leader that can be an addressee of legal obligations and a potent regulatory subject overseeing its GVC. Social science and economic geography research, in contrast, shows that GVCs are complex interlaced and networked structures that are also themselves spatially embedded. As a result, accepting this network character and the embeddedness requires researching not only the legal construction of value chain, but also specifically their construction through a network of global infrastructure, specifically logistics, ICT and finance. This requires legal research into the rules that constitute the infrastructure (law of infrastructure), the inherent normativity and regulatory potential of infrastructure (law in infrastructure) and the infrastructural orientation of laws that regulate global value chains (law for infrastructure).

Completed projects

The Transparency Principle in European Property Law 

Researcher
Anna Berlee

Type of the project
PhD 

Main issue(s) addressed
Is transparency (still) a fundamental principle of property law in Europe?

Short description
One of the main distinguishing features of property rights as opposed to personal rights is their possibility to bind third parties. The justification for the ability to bind third parties, is that third parties are adequately informed about the existence and content of such a right. They must be public (Publicity) and it must be clear as to which object they relate (Specificity). This is laid down by the transparency principle. Legal reality however is somewhat different, and exceptions to the principle are plentiful. The research is aimed at discovering the nature of transparency, the extent of its existence in five Member States of the European Union and what that means for a (possible) EU autonomous transparency principle.

Duration
1 September 2011 - 31 August 2015

EU Optional Instruments: Towards a Theory of Marketability

Researcher
William Bull 

Type of the project
PhD 

Main issue(s) addressed
To what extent is the attractiveness of optional instruments to end users dependent on their instrument-specific provision?

Short description
Research project focuses on existing and proposed optional instruments in different fields of EU law, including contract, company and intellectual property law, in order to analyze the benefits and disadvantages of creating optional private law at European level, and to what extent these differ depending on the particular optional instrument in question.

Duration
1 June 2011 - 31 May 2015

The Evolution of Ownership in American Civil Law Jurisdictions: A Melting Pot of European Private Law and Regional Culture

Researcher
Agustin Parise

Type of the project
PhD

Main issue(s) addressed
The project will study socio-historical events that took place in American jurisdictions, and that influenced changes in the concept of ownership.

Short description
The project encompasses a comparative legal-historical study of European and American law and culture. The project addresses the concept of ownership in a selection of American jurisdictions. The project will provide new knowledge on the influence that European law had in the property law of American jurisdictions.

Duration
01 October 2011 – 01 October 2015

How Far the Theory of Efficient Breach Could Reach

Researcher
Liao Wenqing 

Type of the project
PhD

Main issue(s) addressed
The applicability of the efficient breach doctrine in contract practice

Short description
The Economic Analysis of Law has given rise to many projects seeking to explain the relationship between legal rules and economic efficiency. One of these projects involves the well-known concept of efficient breach. The paper will give a brief profile of this doctrine and show how to coordinate it with 
legal rules and practices.   

Duration
01 September 2011 – 31 August 2015

Standing up for your right(s) in Europe - A Comparative study on Legal Standing (Locus Standi) before the EU and Member States’ Courts

Researcher
Anna Berlee 

Type of the project
Commissioned comparative study 

Main issue(s) addressed
Locus standi before criminal, civil and administrative courts

Short description
The aim of this study is to provide an in-depth and objective comparative analysis of legal provisions, doctrine and case-law on locus standi before civil, criminal and administrative courts of some selected legal systems, and before the EU courts. This analysis serves as the basis for several recommendations in this area.

Duration
1 November 2011 – 31 May 2012

Access to Justice and Domestic Violence: Expedite and Transparent Services for Victims as Implemented in Argentina (2009-2012)

Researcher
Julieta Marotta 

Type of the project
Presentation at the 9th LSRC International Research Conference Rights and Wrongs? Developments in Access to Justice (Magdalen College) 

Main issue(s) addressed
Developments on Access to Justice for Vulnerable Groups

Short description
The presentation was focused in recent developments on access to justice for vulnerable groups in Argentina. A new law adopted in 2009 aimed to reach a change in paradigm regarding accessibility to legal advice for women victims of domestic violence. The presentation aimed to explain the new policies implemented after the new law and its first implications.

Duration
13 September 2012

Codification of the Law in Louisiana: Early Nineteenth-Century oscillation between Continental European and Common Law Systems

Researcher
Agustin Parise 

Type of the project
Law Review Article

Main issue(s) addressed
Codification of the law in a mixed jurisdiction

Short description
This paper centers on the oscillations between the adoptions of provisions from different legal systems in Louisiana. It looks at the codification endeavors that took place in Louisiana during the early American period (1803-1830).  

Duration
01 March 2011 – 01 January 2012

Codification in Louisiana

Researcher
Agustin Parise

Type of the project
Law Review Article

Main issue(s) addressed
Codification of the law in a mixed jurisdiction

Short description
This paper was presented at the Second Thematic Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law. It was presented as an annex to the US National Report. It provides answers to the questionnaire presented by the General Reporter to the session on The Scope and Structure of Civil Codes: The Inclusion of Commercial Law, Family Law, Labour Law and Consumer Law.

Duration
01 October 2011 – 01 May 2012

Sobre el Derecho Jurisprudencial en la Tradición Legal Occidental (Siglos XIX y XX) 

Researcher
Agustin Parise 

Type of the project
Review Article

Main issue(s) addressed
Evolution of case law in the Western Legal Tradition 

Short description
This paper is a review article of volume 40 of Quaderni fiorentini, which deals with the evolution of jurisprudence during the XIX and XX centuries.  

Duration
01 March 2012 – 01 July 2012

Libraries of Civil Codes as Mirrors of Normative Transfers from Europe to the Americas: The Experiences of Lorimier in Quebec (1871-1890) and Varela in Argentina (1873-1875) 

Researcher
Agustin Parise 

Type of the project
Law Review Article

Main issue(s) addressed
Evolution of codification in the Americas

Short description
This paper was presented at the Workshop Entanglements in Legal History at the Max-Planck-Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte. The paper focuses on the work of two jurists from Quebec and Argentina who worked towards identification of formal sources of civil codes during the XIX century. The paper also explores the impact of the work of those jurists well into the XX century and across all of the Americas.

Duration
01 August 2011 – 01 May 2012