On Wednesday, I blogged about Roseanna Sommers’ important new arbitration study. One point I want to highlight about the study is that it makes clear that consumers don’t understand arbitration opt-outs at all. First, some background: some companies insert in their arbitration clauses a provision that allows consumers to opt out of arbitration if they […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
In March, we posted a link to Penn’s David A. Hoffman’s article, Defeating the Empire of Forms, forthcoming in the Virginia Law Review. For those who haven’t found the time to read the article, you can listen to Alan Kaplinsky’s interview with Professor Hoffman about the article at Ballard Spahr’s Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast here. […]
Roseanna Sommers of Michigan has written an important new paper, What do consumers understand about predispute arbitration agreements? An empirical investigation. Here’s the abstract: The results of a survey of 1,071 adults in the United States reveal that most consumers do not pay attention to, let alone understand, arbitration clauses in their everyday lives. The vast […]
Following up on my July 22 post on FedNow: Mark Budnitz of Georgia State reminds me that one issue with FedNow that may create issues for consumers is its incorporation of UCC Article 4A’s wire transfer rules, even though Article 4A’s rules were not written for transactions involving consumers, and so lack safeguards that are […]
Christine posted on Thursday about the risks of FedNow fraud. So you might wonder why, or even if, FedNow would be a positive for consumers. While FedNow obviously won’t be a positive for those who are scammed into using it to enrich fraudsters, it might be positive for consumers in a number of ways. For […]
Yiwei Dou of NYU’s Department of Accounting, Mingyi Hung of the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, Guoman She, and Lynn Linghuan Wang, both of the University of Hong Kong – Faculty of Business and Economics, have written Learning from Peers: Evidence from Disclosure of Consumer Complaints, 77 Journal of Accounting & Economics (Forthcoming […]
Samuel Becher of Victoria University of Wellington has written Ex ante Access to Justice 30 Competition and Consumer Law Journal, issue 2 (2023 Forthcoming). Here is the abstract: Access to justice is a key challenge in the consumer protection landscape. Scholars and policymakers acknowledge this challenge and have devised various means to increase consumers’ access […]
I have blogged before about the suit brought by the Chamber of Commerce and various banking groups against the CFPB in which the plaintiffs argue that the CFPB is wrong to describe discrimination as unfair. But when I asked a research assistant to see if the plaintiffs themselves use the phrase “fair lending” laws to […]
Christine Kexel Chabot of Marquette has written The Founders’ Purse. Here’s the abstract: This Article addresses a new and impending war over the constitutionality of broad delegations of spending power to the executive branch. In an opening salvo, the Fifth Circuit held that Congress unconstitutionally delegated its power of the purse to the Consumer Financial Protection […]
Caleb N. Griffin of Arkansas has written Contracting as a Class, 48 BYU Law Review (2023). Here’s the abstract: Contract law is stuck in a loop of path dependency and stale precedent. Its metaphors, like “the meeting of the minds,” are today laughably implausible. Its values, like “consent,” have been stripped of any real meaning. No one […]