On Her Majesty's Secret Service: Protecting the Consumer in New York City
1971; The Yale Law Journal Company; Volume: 80; Issue: 8 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/795128
ISSN1939-8611
Autores Tópico(s)American Constitutional Law and Politics
ResumoIn 1969, as a staff attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, I wrote an article describing my attempts to promote the rights of consumers by bringing test cases in the New York State courts.'I described the frustrations of litigating within a system that was fraught with procedural hurdles and long delays, and concluded that the courts in which I practiced were indifferent to the pressing needs of consumers and to the reforming legal doctrines which might answer those needs.Convinced that there had to be a more effective means of protecting consumers than by lengthy test litigation, I left the Legal Defense Fund to see what I could accomplish working as a government official within the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs.This article is based upon my fifteen month tenure with the Department's Law Enforcement Division and is an attempt (1) to indicate the ways in which governmental power can be used to protect consumers, (2) to give law students an idea of the day-to-day activities and professional life-style of one type of "public interest" lawyer, and (3) to suggest the ethical conflicts felt by a civil libertarian who works in a law enforcement office. I. Getting It TogetherProtecting the consumer against fraud has been the job of the Federal Trade Commission and various state consumer protection offices or Attorney General's offices.Unfortunately, the records of most of *
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