Author Archives: Jeff Sovern

How much deference must courts give federal consumer protection agency determinations that conduct is unfair after Loper Bright?

Yesterday, the Supreme Court decided Loper Bright, in which it proclaimed that “Chevron is overruled.” But now we have to figure out what that means in particular contexts. One such context is federal consumer protection agency UDAAP statutes, like the FTC Act and Consumer Financial Protection Act. When those statutes give the agencies the power […]

Call for Abstracts for the Consumer Law Scholars Conference

We received the following Call for Abstracts for the Consumer Law Scholars Conference, always an important event for consumer law scholars: We are pleased to announce the seventh annual Consumer Law Scholars Conference (CLSC), which will be held Thursday and Friday, March 6-7, 2025 at Boston University. Save the date! The purpose of the CLSC is to support in-progress scholarship, foster […]

The Biden-Trump debate and consumer protection

Will consumer protection come up during the debate? My guess is not. It seems unlikely that a moderator or President Trump would raise it. I could see President Biden bringing up junk fees, as he has called for their regulation, in response to a question, though I am not expecting it. The headline issues have […]

Strahilevitz & Liu paper offers theory for Article III standing in data breach cases

Lior Strahilevitz of Chicago and Lisa Yao Liu of the Columbia Business School have written Cash Substitution and Deferred Consumption as Data Breach Harms. Here’s the abstract: Federal courts have long been divided over whether consumers whose data are breached suffer an “injury in fact” that gives them standing to sue under Article III of the […]

Solove & Hartzog: The Failure of Data Security Law

Daniel J. Solove of George Washington Woodrow Hartzog of Boston University and the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society have posted on SSRN a chapter from their book, Breached! Why Data Security Law Fails and How to Improve It. The chapter is titled The Failure of Data Security Law. Here’s the abstract: In […]

Call for submissions on the FDA

Here is the first part of the call for submissions: The Food and Drug Law Institute (FDLI) is pleased to solicit abstracts for the Food and Drug Law Journal 2024 Symposium, “From Past to Progress: Envisioning the Future of FDA Law and Regulation.” The Symposium will celebrate FDLI’s 75th Anniversary and its enduring contributions to the field […]

After fighting to make the CFPB less independent, conservatives complain that it’s not independent

As most of you know, conservatives and the industry regularly complain about what they call the Bureau’s lack of accountability. Their previous efforts to strip away the CFPB’s independence resulted in the Seila Law decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the president had to be able to fire the CFPB director without cause, […]

Is the CFPB facing still another challenge?

Shortly after the Supreme Court upheld the CFPB’s constitutionality in the CFSA case, Harvard Emeritus Professor Hal Scott published an op-ed in WSJ, The CFPB’s Pyrrhic Supreme Court Victory (behind paywall) claiming that the CFPB has still another problem to deal with. Professor Scott’s essay, along with another piece posted on a Federalist Society website […]

Is payday lending the fentanyl of consumer lending?

Some years back, I had major surgery. When I woke up after the surgery, I was on fentanyl for pain relief. The following day, I was stepped down to morphine. Morphine was less effective at blocking the pain, but the staff explained that it was too risky to keep me on fentanyl. And in the […]