Category Archives: Consumer Law Scholarship

Sant’Ambrogio: Federal government filed only eight consumer protection cases in federal court in a recent year

by Jeff Sovern According to Private Enforcement in Administrative Courts, 72 Vanderbilt Law Review,  (Forthcoming), by Michael Sant'Ambrogio of Michigan State, in the year ending March 31, 2017, the government filed only eight consumer protection cases in federal court, which contrasts with the 9,706 cases filed by private plaintiffs. Sometimes we see the argument that we don't need private enforcement […]

DiLorenzo FinTech Article

by Jeff Sovern My colleague, Vincent DiLorenzo, has written Fintech Lending: A Study of Expectations Versus Market Outcomes, Forthcoming in Review of Banking & Financial Law. Here is the abstract: This paper documents the expectations for the fintech lending industry, which has emerged in this decade, and compares such expectations to market outcomes. It presents an […]

Issacharoff & Marotta-Wurgler Paper on Trends Leading to Less State Court Caselaw on Electronic and Shrinkwrap Contracts

Samuel Issacharoff and Florencia Marotta-Wurgler, both of NYU, have written The Hollowed Out Common Law. Here's the abstract: The electronic marketplace poses novel issues for contract law. Contracts created through browsewrap, clickwrap, and shrinkwrap (contracts whose embedded terms are only available after purchase) poorly fit doctrines that emerged from face-to-face offer and acceptance, the mutual execution […]

Todd Zywicki article attacks Behavioral Law & Economics as applied to consumer finance

Todd J. Zywicki of George Mason has written The Behavioral Economics of Behavioral Law & Economics, Journal of Behavioral Economics (2019, Forthcoming). Here is the abstract: Behavioral Law & Economics (BLE) has loudly proclaimed its victory over traditional law & economics methodologies. Nowhere has this proclamation been so loud or self-certain as with respect to claims […]

Dee Pridgen Seeks Co-Author for Consumer Law Treatises

Dee Pridgen is seeking a coauthor/collaborator for her two treatises published by Thomson Reuters, Consumer Protection and the Law and Consumer Credit and the Law.  These books have been updated yearly for 30 years and are available both in print and on Westlaw.  Her current coauthor, Richard Alderman, Professor Emeritus of the University of Houston […]

Chandrasekher & Horton Article Proposes Solution to Arbitration Problem: Arbitration Multiplier

Andrea Chandrasekher and David Horton, both of California, Davis, have written Arbitration Nation: Data from Four Providers, 109 California Law Review. Here's the abstract: Forced arbitration has long been controversial. In the 1980s, the Supreme Court expanded the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), sparking debate about whether private dispute resolution is an elegant alternative to litigation or a rigged […]

Exciting CFP: Berkeley Consumer Law Scholars Conference

We have received the following call for papers appearing below. This one looks especially exciting for consumer law scholars: it's at an elite law school and has an impressive roster of organizers.  The Berkeley Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice, its director Ted Mermin, and co-organizers Abbye Atkinson, Kathleen Engel, Rory Van Loo, and […]

Paper on Poor Consumers, High-Cost Credit, and Payday Loans

Shmuel I. Becher of Victoria University of Wellington, Yuval Feldman of Bar-Ilan University and Orly Lobel of San Diego have written Poor Consumer(s) Law: The Case of High-Cost Credit and Payday Loans in Legal Applications of Marketing Theory, Jacob Gersen & Joel Steckel, eds., Cambridge University Press (2019, Forthcoming). Here's the abstract: Consumers in general, and […]

De Geest Book Argues Marketing Causes Inequality

Gerrit De Geest of Washington University in St. Louis has written Rents: How Marketing Causes Inequality. Chapter One is available here.  Here is the abstract: This working paper contains the introduction and first chapter of a forthcoming book on the relationship between marketing and inequality. I argue that the dramatic rise of income inequality since 1970 […]

“‘Too Little Too Late’: Bankruptcy Booms Among Older Americans”

Yesterday, the New York Times ran a distressing story by personal finance reporter Tara Siegel Bernard about the increasing rate of people 65 and older filing for bankruptcy protection. The story relies on a study that was recently released by professors Deborah Thorne of the University of Idaho, Pamela Foohey of the Indiana University Maurer School […]