소비자법에 있어서의 인간상(人間像)과 각국의 입법동향

This article reviews the development of legislations of each country in consumer laws, and also tracks the image of persons reflected in consumer laws. The protection of consumers has been the major issue in each country in last decade with the advent of consumer society. And recently the protection of financial consumers has also been in progress with the wide selling of financial products to general public and the expansion of consumer credit. The emergence of consumer laws is in tension with traditional civil laws. The traditional civil laws has captured persons in abstraction and has regarded each person equal under the principle of freedom of contracts. On the other hand the consumer laws capture living persons with a variety of characters and recognize consumers in inferior positions to business persons. So the consumer laws support the consumers for them to make fair contracts in consumer transactions with business persons. The consumer laws do not change the principle of freedom of contracts. It only prepares level playing field for consumers and business persons to trade fairly, which means the realization of the actual freedom of contracts. The consumer laws of each country are not all the same in the fields covered and the regime of legislations. However they are generally comprised of duty to provide informations and explanations, cooling-off period, and prohibition of abusive practices. There are also included provisions that void or correct unfair terms of contracts. The financial consumer laws have adopted even the duty to secure suitability. Germany has incorporated several consumer laws into Civil Code and Japan is considering whether to insert the consumer laws into Civil Code. The consumer laws are still in developing stage. They should tackle newly emerging problems in consumer transactions. Even though it is desirable to make consumer laws more visible and comprehensible by streamlining with Civil Code, it is inevitable to maintain the special consumer laws.