Catherine Martin Christopher of Texas Tech has written Mobile Banking: The Answer for the Unbanked in America? 65 Catholic University Law Review, (2015 ). Here is the abstract: In the U.S., the poor often lack access to mainstream banking services. Instead, they rely on expensive, poorly regulated alternatives like check cashers, payday lenders, pawn shops, and […]
Category Archives: Consumer Law Scholarship
Here. Here is the Executive Summary: Debt buyers, specialized debt-collection companies, purchase defaulted consumer debt from creditors such as credit card companies for pennies on the dollar. Debt buyers then attempt to collect the debt, often by suing borrowers in court. Unfortunately, because debts are typically sold to debt buyers without fully verifying the accuracy […]
Kevin M. McDonald of VW Credit Inc., and Kenneth J. Rojc of Nisen & Elliott, LLC have written the Business Lawyer's annual survey of consumer auto finance developments, this year called Automotive Finance: The Regulatory Cup Spilleth Over. Here is the abstract: Almost every aspect of the life cycle of retail contract and lease transactions, […]
Florencia Marotta-Wurgler of NYU has written Understanding Privacy Policies: Content, Self-Regulation, and Markets. Here is the abstract: The current regulatory approach to consumer information privacy is based on a “notice and choice” self-regulation model, but commentators disagree on its impact. I conduct a comprehensive empirical analysis of 261 privacy policies across seven markets and measure […]
Howard Beales of George Washington University's School of Business and Timothy J. Muris of George Mason have written FTC Consumer Protection at 100: 1970s Redux or Protecting Markets to Protect Consumers? 83 George Washington Law Review 2157(2015). Here is the abstract: Throughout most of the Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC” or “Commission”) history, the agency has been […]
Imre S. Szalai of Loyola New Orleans has written DIRECTV, Inc. v. Imburgia: How the Supreme Court Used a Jedi Mind Trick To Turn Arbitration Law Upside Down, 32 Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution, 1, (2016 Forthcoming). Here's the abstract: The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) is the primary federal statute governing millions of arbitration […]
Chris Jay Hoofnagle of Berkeley has written Assessing the Federal Trade Commission's Privacy Assessments, 14(2) IEEE Security & Privacy 58–64 (Mar/Apr. 2016). Here is the abstract: Consumer protection regulators worldwide share basic problems: the companies that regulators police are so powerful and rich that fines do not matter. Consider the French with their €150,000 fine […]
Oren Bar-Gill of Harvard and Kevin E. Davis of NYU have written (Mis)perceptions of Law in Consumer Markets. Here's the abstract: There are good reasons to believe that consumers’ behavior is sometimes influenced by systematic misperceptions of legal norms that govern product quality. Consumers might misperceive specific rules, such as those found in food safety […]
We have received the following Call for Papers: The three Consumer-Protection related committees of the ABA Antitrust Section (Consumer Protection, Privacy, and Advertising Disputes & Litigation Committees) are excited to announce a new initiative geared towards young lawyers and law students interested in the consumer protection and privacy fields – an opportunity to get published […]
Tess Wilkinson‐Ryan of Penn has written Contracts Without Terms. Here is the abstract: In consumer contracting, the ritual of documentation and provision of terms is essentially vestigial, at least as a form of deal-making communication between the parties. This paper starts with a thought experiment: what would it look like to have contracts but no […]