Author Archives: Jeff Sovern

Horton study finds lawless arbitrators

David Horton of California, Davis has written Do Arbitrators Follow the Law? Evidence from Clause Construction, 126 Colum. L. Rev. Forum — (forthcoming 2025). Here’s the abstract: Courts and scholars have long disagreed about whether arbitrators follow the law. In the past three decades, the stakes in this debate have soared as the U.S. Supreme Court […]

Jon Hill: DC Circ. Judges Skeptical Of Blockade On CFPB Mass Layoffs

Here, in Law360. Judges Rao and Katsas, both Trump appointees, expressed concerns about whether the administration had taken final action, required for court review under § 704 of the APA, and what an injunction requiring the Bureau to fulfill its statutory mandate would look like. The third judge, Judge Pillard, an Obama appointee, seemed less […]

Even consumer lawyers need the CFPB

That’s the lesson from NCLC lawyer Lauren Saunders’s essay, A $1,000 Taxi? That’s What Consumer Protections Are For at OtherWords.org. Here’s a striking paragraph: I’m a consumer lawyer. I know that federal law requires the bank to investigate disputes about incorrect charges and to correct errors. I even wrote a long letter full of legalese and got my […]

Kate Berry: Trump’s CFPB has dropped half of all pending litigation

Here in the American Banker (behind a paywall but should be available on Lexis). The article includes some troubling observations, including that despite a Paoletta memo claiming that the Bureau under Trump will focus on consumer fraud, the dismissed cases include at least one case involving deceptive marketing. The article does mention some cases that […]

A Companion Guide to the Restatement of Consumer Contracts

Oren Bar-Gill of Harvard, Omri Ben-Shahar of Chicago, and Florencia Marotta-Wurgler of NYU have written A Companion Guide to the Restatement of Consumer Contracts. Here’s the abstract: This short Essay, written by the Reporters of the recently published Restatement of Consumer Contracts, is intended as a companion to the Restatement. It highlights three areas, where the […]

American Banker op-ed: Chain saws have no place in financial services regulation

From a piece I wrote (behind paywall but probably available soon on Lexis): Have you heard about the government agency led by a guy holding a chainsaw as he promises dramatic cuts in regulation? Think it’s a story about Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency? It’s also about James Gilleran, leader of the […]

Study finds the average successful complaint to the CFPB complaint database yields payout of $1,470

Charlotte Haendler of Southern Methodist University (SMU) – SMU Cox School of Business and Rawley Heimer of Arizona State University (ASU) – W.P. Carey School of Business have written The Hidden Costs of Financial Services: Consumer Complaints and Financial Restitution. Here’s the abstract: Financial disputes are a widespread but understudied feature of consumer financial markets. Using […]