Hosea H. Harvey of Temple has written Opening Schumer’s Box: The Empirical Foundations of Modern Consumer Finance Disclosure Law, 48 University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform (2014). Here's the abstract: This Article explores the fundamental failure of Congress’ twenty-five-year quest to utilize disclosure as the primary tool to both regulate credit card issuers and […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
Here. Here's the beginning of the story: If you're a TiVo user, your digital video recorder may be ratting you out to advertisers. In the latest example of consumer privacy being threatened by Big Data, TiVo's number-crunching subsidiary this week announced a partnership with media heavyweight Viacom that helps advertisers target TV viewers with specific […]
Here. Excerpt: Since lawmakers passed a landmark overhaul of American financial regulation in 2010, congressional Democrats and the Obama administration have successfully fought changes to the law, known as Dodd-Frank. Among the proposed changes, Republicans have sought to restructure the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or ease the regulatory burden on mid-sized banks, which have struggled […]
My colleague, Marc DeGirolami, read through the Spokeo oral argument transcript and had the following observations. I thought they might be of interest to readers of the blog. * Justice Kagan emphasized to counsel for Spokeo that the reporting/dissemination of false information in credit reports is itself plausibly described as a harm. So that […]
Here. An excerpt: The arguments in Spokeo Inc. v. Robins et al. took the usual pattern of the four liberal justices arguing for a broad interpretation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act and standing to bring claims under Article III and the conservative justices appearing to seek to limit companies’ exposure to court proceedings. In the […]
by Jeff Sovern Deepak posted earlier about the extraordinary Times story on arbitration. I have been studying arbitration for some time, and yet some items in the story were new to me. Though the entire article demands to be read, here are two especially revealing quotes: Since no government agency tracks class actions, The Times […]
So says the American Banker here. In particular, the bill would apply to student debt owned or guaranteed by the government.
Here. The entire essay is worth reading, but here's an excerpt to whet your appetite: The latest industry-sponsored bill would fundamentally change the structure of the CFPB by replacing the agency's single, independent director with a commission of political appointees. * * * [T]he agency is working, which may be exactly why the big […]
Robert H. Klonoff of Lewis & Clark has written Class Actions in the Year 2025: A Prognosis, Forthcoming in the Emory Law Journal. Here is the abstract: In this Article, I reflect on what the federal judiciary has done in recent years, and I attempt to predict what the class action landscape will look like […]