The Special Nature of Electronic Consumer Protection within the Rules of Private International Law

Abstract

Consumer electronic contracts are one of the most widespread shopping methods, especially with the tremendous technological development. Whereby an individual can purchase any commodity from anywhere in the world without having to move from their location. This entails ensuring the legal relationship includes of a foreign element, raising the issue of conflict of laws and the necessity to determine the applicable law. Legislative shortcomings, whether in Palestinian legislation or most other countries’ legislation, have led to difficulty in determining the international nature of such contracts. On the other hand, traditional conflict of laws rules have become unsuitable for applying to electronic consumer contracts, as such contracts lack balance between their parties.

This requires defining the concept of the electronic consumer and the specificity of its protection within the framework of private international law, determining the appropriate standard for international electronic consumer contracts, and clarifying the relationship of private international law to consumer protection in electronic contracts by discussing the suitability of the principle of autonomy of will and the principle of specific performance, as well as traditional attribution rules in consumer protection in electronic consumer contracts.

The study concluded several findings, including: the inadequacy of the principle of specific performance in determining the applicable law to electronic consumer contracts, as it results in the application of the supplier’s law, thus failing to ensure consumer protection (the weak party). Additionally, the inadequacy of the two reserved attribution principles, as stipulated by the Palestinian legislator in the draft Palestinian Civil Law No. (4) of 2012, in providing protection for the electronic consumer when determining the applicable law to the contract. Furthermore, attributing the law that offers the most protection to the consumer is more suitable among attribution principles to govern electronic consumer contracts.