Here, at Ballard Spahr’s Consumer Financial Law Monitor podcast. The authors are Pamela Foohey of Georgia, Robert M. Lawless of Illinois College of Law and Deborah Thorne, Professor of Sociology at the University of Idaho, and the book is about who seeks bankruptcy and what drives them to do so. Warning: you will order the […]
Category Archives: Consumer Law Scholarship
Angela Littwin of Texas, Adrienne Adams of Michigan State University, and Angie Kennedy, also of Michigan State have written Ineffective Relief for Coerced Debt: The Failure of Divorce and Debtor-Creditor Law to Address Debt Created by Domestic Violence. Here’s the abstract: Coerced debt occurs when the abusive partner in a relationship characterized by domestic violence (DV) […]
Myriam E. Gilles, now of Northwestern, has written Arbitration In Name Only. Here’s the abstract: Modern arbitration clauses hide a dirty secret: many aren’t arbitration at all. They masquerade as mutual commitments to fair and efficient private dispute resolution but, in truth, are mere imitations of genuine arbitration provisions. Some reserve for the drafter the power […]
Mark Elliott Budnitz of Georgia State has written Big Tech and Consumer Payments: The Good, the Bad, and the Unintended Consequences, 37 Loy. Consumer L. Rev. 116 (2025). Here’s the abstract: “Each stage of the American banking industry history demonstrates the interlinkage of finance and technology…” Our era is no exception. The financial services industry […]
Daniel J. Solove of George Washington has written Enforcing Privacy Law: Why Private Litigation Is Essential. Here’s the abstract: Enforcement is an essential dimension for effective privacy and data protection laws—and it is probably the most important one. No matter how many privacy laws are enacted and how strong the laws are, if enforcement falls short, […]
Nicholas R. Parrillo of Yale has written Administrative Law as a Choice of Business Strategy: Comparing the Industries Who Have Routinely Sued Their Regulators with the Industries Who Rarely Have. Here’s the abstract: For some large and powerful industries, it has long been normal and even routine for businesses to sue their federal regulator. For other […]
Mark Bartholomew of SUNY Buffalo and Samuel Becher of Victoria University of Wellington have written The End of Shopping. Here’s the abstract: Self-acting “shopping agents” are no longer science fiction. Deployed by major platforms like Google, Amazon, and Walmart, AI systems are evolving from passive advisors to autonomous decision-makers capable of opening accounts, canceling subscriptions, and […]
Meirav Furth of Tel-Aviv University School of Law and NYU Law has written Discrimination in Contractual Performance : Theory, Evidence, and Preliminary Policy Prescriptions. Here’s the abstract This Article examines the often-overlooked practice of “selective performance” of standard form consumer contracts-where sellers permit employees to exercise discretion by waiving or modifying contractual terms to maintain customer […]
Alexa Rosenbloom of Harvard has written The Pervasive and Troubling use of Coverage Attorneys in Assembly-Line Litigation, 33 Geo. J. on Poverty L. & Pol’y (2026) (forthcoming). Here’s the abstract: Debt collection cases dominate state court civil dockets in Massachusetts and across the country. Extant scholarship regarding debt collection in the courts has focused on […]
At the Consumer Policy Center. Here’s an excerpt from the announcement: In July 2025, a new congressional law [the so-called Genius Ac] purported to provide adequate consumer protections for this new payment method. Yet, according to a Consumer Policy Center (CPC) report issued today, the law includes far fewer protections than provided for other payment methods such […]