S.I. Strong of Missouri has written Incentives for Large-Scale Arbitration: How Policymakers Can Influence Party Behaviour. Here's the abstract: At this point, the future of large-scale arbitration (i.e., class, mass and collective procedures) can best be described as mixed. On the one hand, class arbitration has been curtailed in the United States as a result […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
Liran Haim and Ronald J. Mann of Columbia have written Putting Stored-Value Cards in Their Place, 18 Lewis & Clark Law Review 989 (2014). Here is the abstract: This Essay explores the effects of stored-value cards on social welfare. We argue that stored-value cards, in general, are socially beneficial payment devices. Their burgeoning use benefits […]
Here. Excerpts: [T]he U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the most powerful business lobby in the country, started a new effort to block the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by lobbying lawmakers to attach a rider to the federal budget bill that would force the regulator to conduct a new study before issuing any rule, according to people […]
by Jeff Sovern Here. Excerpt: [C]ompanies can use class action waivers to block consumer protection laws unless consumer protection laws find a way to block class action waivers. * * * Last month, the bureau made public a proposal to block class action waivers in arbitration clauses. A leading advocate for arbitration in the financial […]
Allison posted yesterday about the anti-CFPB ad. The American Banker's Rachel Witkowski and Rob Blackwell have more here. Among their reasons for saying it could backfire: "the ad is over the top;" "Consumer credit isn't tighter since the CFPB's creation;" and "The ad's sponsor has connections to a company under investigation by the CFPB."
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 […]
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 […]