Foreword: Advertising and the Law

This foreword to a special issue of the Buffalo Law Review provides an overview of seven articles addressing the intersection of advertising and law. The special issue stems from a November 2009 conference held at the University at Buffalo Law School. The foreword examines the particular difficulties in characterizing the relationship between advertisers, consumers, and the law. Advertisers promulgate certain symbolic meanings designed to induce consumption.

Sometimes these meanings are contested through legal means yet consumers can only participate in advertising's regulatory apparatus indirectly. This results in a dynamic between advertiser and consumer that is difficult to define yet ubiquitous in our lives and critical to proposals for legal reform. The articles described offer important new evidence and modes of analysis for understanding this dynamic.