Call for Abstracts for Second Annual Berkeley Consumer Law Scholars Conference

We have received the following call for abstracts (last year's conference was excellent):

The Berkeley Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice, its director Ted Mermin, and co-organizers Abbye Atkinson, Kathleen Engel, Manisha Padi, Rory Van Loo, and Lauren Willis are pleased to announce the second annual Consumer Law Scholars Conference (CLSC), which will be held the afternoon and evening of March 5 and all day March 6, 2020, in Berkeley, CA.

The conference will support in-progress scholarship, foster a community of consumer law scholars, and build bridges with scholars in other disciplines who focus on consumer issues. The bulk of the conference will consist of paper workshop sessions at which discussants, rather than authors, introduce and lead discussions of the papers. Everyone who attends a session will be expected to have read the paper; everyone is a participant. The conference will also feature keynotes by leading practitioners and prominent policymakers, as well as time to discuss ideas and collaborate informally.

If you would like to workshop an unpublished paper, please submit: (1) a title, (2) a short abstract that grounds your work in relevant literature, and (3) an outline HERE by October 11, 2019. We will announce accepted abstracts in early November.

Potential topics may range across the full breadth of issues involving consumers in the marketplace, including, e.g.: student loan servicing and debt cancellation; online product endorsement; racial, ethnic and other disparities in treatment by lenders and by merchants; debt collection; public health disclosures; credit reporting; commercial speech and the First Amendment; the proposed Restatement of Consumer Contracts; the CFPB in theory and practice; issues of federalism, preemption, and sovereign immunity in small-dollar lending regulation; UDA(A)P and disclosure laws; consumer behavior; fintech; and the application of consumer law to abuses in the criminal justice system.

Workshop versions of the papers will be due February 3, 2020. We reserve the right to cancel workshops if the paper draft is not provided sufficiently in advance for meaningful review by participants.

Conference participants will be expected to read the papers in advance. 15 papers will be discussed over the course of 5 sessions (3 concurrently per session), meaning that each participant should be prepared to read and comment on 5 of the selected papers. Thus, please calendar at least two days of preparation time in advance of the conference. The final schedule of sessions will be distributed in early February.

LOGISTICS

Participants will cover their own travel and lodging expenses. (Berkeley Law has a very small amount available for those who could not otherwise attend.) The Berkeley Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice will provide breakfast and lunch to all attendees on Friday. Presenters and moderators are invited to attend dinner on Thursday evening. We will reserve a block of hotel rooms nearby and will share further details on how to register soon.

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