Stephanie Plamondon Bair of Brigham Young has written Dynamic Rationality, Forthcoming in the Ohio State Law Journal. Here is the abstract: In 1998, Christine Jolls, Cass Sunstein, and Richard Thaler published A Behavioral Approach to Law and Economics, one of the most important pieces of scholarship in decades. Their Article famously proposes a departure from […]
Category Archives: Consumer Law Scholarship
Here. Excerpt: It’s unlikely that anyone actually believes that consumers understand arbitration clauses and take them into account when making buying choices. These arguments aren’t meant to be taken seriously. They are air cover for banking executives who like taking advantage of customers and politicians who want to do favors for the financial lobby. That’s the […]
Florencia Marotta-Wurgler of NYU has written Self-Regulation and Competition in Privacy Policies, 45 Journal of Legal Studies (2016). Here's the abstract I investigate alternative explanations for the content of privacy policies. Under one model of self-regulation, firms signal their privacy protections to consumers by highlighting compliance with third-party guidelines. However, in a sample of 249 […]
by Jeff Sovern It's for an arbitration symposium at Rutgers and is available for download here. I would love to hear comments! Here's the abstract: In September 2016, regulators charged Wells Fargo with opening millions of unauthorized accounts on behalf of its customers. When some of those customers filed class actions against Wells, the bank initially […]
David A. Hyman of Georgetown, David J. Franklyn of the University of San Francisco, Calla E. Yee of Kilpatrick, Townsend & Stockton, and Mohammad Rahmati of Sharif University have written Going Native: Can Consumers Recognize Native Advertising? Does it Matter? 19 Yale J.L. & Tech. 77 (2017). Here the abstract: Native advertising, which matches the […]
Nathan Cortez of SMU has written Regulation by Database, University of Colorado Law Review, Vol. 89, 2017. Here is the abstract: The federal government currently publishes 195,245 searchable databases online, a number of which include information about private parties that is negative or unflattering in some way. Federal agencies increasingly publish adverse data not just […]
Brian Melzer of Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management and Aaron Schroeder of the CFPB have written Loan Contracting in the Presence of Usury Limits: Evidence from Automobile Lending. Here is the abstract: We study the effects of interest rate ceilings on the market for automobile loans. We find that loan contracting and the organization of […]
James Gibson of Richmond has written Boilerplate's False Dichotomy, Georgetown Law Journal, Forthcoming. Here is the abstract: The argument against enforcing boilerplate contracts (i.e., contracts that no one reads) seems clear. Indeed, if this were a court case, we would say that the jury is in; the evidence against boilerplate is overwhelming. Yet the judge […]
Verity Winship and Jennifer K. Robbennolt of Illinois have written Admissions of Guilt in Civil Enforcement, Minnesota Law Review, Vol. 101 (Forthcoming). Here is the abstract: Should agencies require admissions of guilt from the targets of civil enforcement? Administrative agencies rely heavily on settlement as a key enforcement tool. Admissions of guilt – or, more […]
Stephen J. Ware of Kansas has written The Centrist Case Against Current (Conservative) Arbitration Law, 68 Florida Law Review (2016). Here is the abstract: In The Politics of Arbitration Law and Centrist Proposals for Reform, I explained how issues surrounding consumer and other adhesive arbitration agreements became divisive along predictable political lines (progressives vs. conservatives) […]

