Access to justice for consumers in globalized B2C electronic commerce. Myth or Reality?

Rolando Joaquín Ortega Hernández

Keywords

Access to justice; arbitration; consumers; e-commerce, ODR.

Abstract

Today, the ubiquity of the Internet raises the need to study the behavior of consumers and users from a transnational perspective, not even placing them in a region or continent, but as an essential element of world economic development. For this reason, consumer trust in cross-border e-commerce is a challenge for many political and economic global operators. It is therefore essential to create alternative methods of conflict resolution, global and harmonized to ensure the legitimate rights of consumers and users, access to justice in the broad sense, and access to, both individually and collective effective judicial protection.
In this paper the concept of access to justice will be analyzed from the perspective of the consumer in e-commerce and its materialization through the Online Dispute Resolution. In particular, the legal implications that it has for cross-border electronic commerce will be analyzed, the fact that the consumer subscribes with the buyer, arbitration clauses, prior to the emergence of the conflict, without the need to be ratified. For this reason, the alternative to a contradictory method complemented with mediation will be studied, different from arbitration but that does not undermine the rights of consumers by undermining their right to effective judicial protection.