Author Archives: Jeff Sovern

Sickler Article on Why Courts Require Filing Suits to Rescind Under TILA

Alexandra Power Everhart Sickler of North Dakota has written The Truth Shall Set You Free: Explaining Judicial Hostility to the Truth in Lending Act’s Right to Rescind a Mortgage Loan, forthcoming in the Rutgers Journal of Law and Urban Policy. Here is the abstract: The Supreme Court is entertaining a divide among the federal circuits […]

Can You Suggest Skills Exercises for Consumer Law Courses?

by Jeff Sovern A professor who is new to teaching consumer law has asked about skills exercises (also called active learning exercises) professors could require of students.  I suggested having a student write a demand letter that didn’t violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (or that did), writing a privacy policy, or perhaps one of the many […]

Mary Heen Paper Asks: Should Insurers Be Able to Discriminate

Mary L. Heen of Richmond has written Nondiscrimination in Insurance:  The Next Chapter, 49 Georgia Law Review (2014-2015).  Here is the abstract: For nearly 150 years, American insurance companies have engaged in race and gender pricing practices that would be illegal if followed today by any other major commercial enterprise.  The insurance industry has defended its […]

Do Mortgage Strip-Downs Affect the Supply of Mortgage Credit?

Wenli Li of the Philadelphia Fed, Ishani Tewari of the Yale School of Management, and Michelle J. White of California, San Diego's Department of Economics and the National Bureau of Economic Research have written Using Bankruptcy to Reduce Foreclosures: Does Strip-Down of Mortgages Affect the Supply of Mortgage Credit?  Here's the abstract: We assess the […]

Hockett on Using Eminent Domain to Save Underwater Mortgages in NYC

Robert C. Hockett of Cornell has written 'We Don't Follow, We Lead': How New York City Will Save Mortgage Loans by Condemning Them, 124 Yale Law Journal Forum 131 (2014).  Here is the abstract: This brief invited essay lays out in summary form the eminent domain plan for securitized underwater mortgage loans that the author […]

Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Sheryl Harris on the St. John’s Arbitration Study

Here.  An excerpt: Right now, the CFPB is finishing up the second phase of its study, which will hone in on consumers' understanding of arbitration clauses. At that point, it will decide whether it needs to act. If the bureau's findings are anything like those of the law school study, it must. Being stripped of our […]