We received the following call for abstracts: We are pleased to announce the Ninth Annual Consumer Law Scholars Conference will be held in Berkeley on Thursday and Friday, March 4-5, 2027! Please save the date! The purpose of the CLSC is to support in-progress scholarship, foster a community of consumer law scholars, and build connections with scholars in other disciplines who […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
Alexi Pfeffer-Gillet of Washington and Lee has written From Mutual Aid to Batched Plaintiffs: Arbitration’s Collective Roots and Procedural Future, 76 Emory Law Journal (2026). Here’s the abstract: Arbitration is spinning out of control. The seemingly innocuous private alternative to court has for decades been the primary battleground for consumers and employees with widespread claims […]
Until recently, the CFPB had regional offices around the country, and of course, some employees were assigned to these offices. But according to Bloomberg Law’s Evan Weinberger, the Bureau has told the employees who worked at these offices that if they wanted to keep their jobs, they had only two weeks to decide whether they […]
From Trump v. Slaughter: “the FTC has the power to promulgate substantive rules that carry the force of law. In the consumer-protection realm, for instance, the FTC is tasked with giving content to the startlingly abstract idea of “acts or practices which are unfair or deceptive.” 15 U. S. C. §57a(a)(1)(B).” But here’s how Gorsuch […]
Alisher Juzgenbayev, a J.D./Ph.D. Candidate at Northwestern, has written The Vanishing Enforcer: Consumer Protection in an Era of Dual Retrenchment, 120 Nw. L. Rev. 1449 (2026). Here’s the abstract: Recent developments, including reductions in the federal workforce, effective suspension of certain enforcement activities, and attempted centralization of independent agency rulemaking in the White House, have […]
According to the complaint in Fish v. Entrata Inc., when Property Management Companies (PMCs)–landlords–switched from offering a product on an opt-in basis to offering tenants the product for free for a month, followed by a negative option opt-out, it had a dramatic effect on sales: 9. The RentDynamics website explains to PMCs that the “opt-out” […]
That is one of the questions Georgetown’s Steve Vladeck raises in today’s edition of his One First newsletter. Some background: the Department of Justice has made various arguments in an environmental case against the lawfulness of citizen suits to enforce environmental laws. Some of the arguments are not relevant to private claims to enforce consumer […]
The order is here. Reuters has a story here. The district court is to consider in the first instance how to respond to the administration’s absurd proposal to cut more than half the Bureau’s employees.
At 38 Loyola Consumer Law Review 183 (2026). Here’s the abstract: The second Trump Administration has waged war against consumers and against the federal agencies that seek to protect consumers. It has tried to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, expand the President’s authority to exert iron-fisted control over agency directors, and significantly shrink the federal workforce that in the […]
So claims a class action complaint in a story by Law360’s Lauren Berg. WaPo’s practice came to light because of the New York law obliging companies using surveillance pricing to so disclose. That’s the first use of surveillance pricing I’ve heard of that we wouldn’t know about but for the NY statute; I wonder if […]