Category Archives: Consumer Law Scholarship

David Hoffman discusses his article about eliminating forms for small dollar contracts on the Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast

In March, we posted a link to Penn’s David A. Hoffman’s article, Defeating the Empire of Forms, forthcoming in the Virginia Law Review. For those who haven’t found the time to read the article, you can listen to Alan Kaplinsky’s interview with Professor Hoffman about the article at Ballard Spahr’s Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast here. […]

Important Roseanna Sommers study finds consumers don’t understand arbitration clauses

Roseanna Sommers of Michigan has written an important new paper, What do consumers understand about predispute arbitration agreements? An empirical investigation. Here’s the abstract: The results of a survey of 1,071 adults in the United States reveal that most consumers do not pay attention to, let alone understand, arbitration clauses in their everyday lives. The vast […]

Study finds CFPB complaint database affects mortgage approval rates–of rival banks

Yiwei Dou of NYU’s Department of Accounting, Mingyi Hung of the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, Guoman She, and Lynn Linghuan Wang, both of the University of Hong Kong – Faculty of Business and Economics, have written Learning from Peers: Evidence from Disclosure of Consumer Complaints, 77 Journal of Accounting & Economics (Forthcoming […]

Becher Essay: Ex Ante Access to Justice

Samuel Becher of Victoria University of Wellington has written Ex ante Access to Justice 30 Competition and Consumer Law Journal, issue 2 (2023 Forthcoming). Here is the abstract: Access to justice is a key challenge in the consumer protection landscape. Scholars and policymakers acknowledge this challenge and have devised various means to increase consumers’ access […]

Christine Kexel Chabot paper on the CFSA case and history

Christine Kexel Chabot of Marquette has written The Founders’ Purse. Here’s the abstract: This Article addresses a new and impending war over the constitutionality of broad delegations of spending power to the executive branch. In an opening salvo, the Fifth Circuit held that Congress unconstitutionally delegated its power of the purse to the Consumer Financial Protection […]

Caleb Griffin article: Contracting as a Class

Caleb N. Griffin of Arkansas has written Contracting as a Class, 48 BYU Law Review (2023). Here’s the abstract: Contract law is stuck in a loop of path dependency and stale precedent. Its metaphors, like “the meeting of the minds,” are today laughably implausible. Its values, like “consent,” have been stripped of any real meaning. No one […]

If the Chamber of Commerce’s claim that discrimination isn’t unfair is correct, why does Student for Fair Admissions have “fair” in its name?

I am working on an article about the CFPB’s determination that discrimination is unfair, a claim that the Chamber of Commerce and banking trade groups are challenging in litigation. Consequently, I am collecting examples in which people used the word “fair” to mean “without discrimination,” or conversely, “unfair” to convey discriminatory conduct. A prominent example […]

Another benefit to submitting to the Berkeley Consumer Law Scholars Conference

Alan Kaplinsky of Ballard Spahr has asked me to mention that the authors of papers that are selected for the Berkeley Consumer Law Scholars Conference that I posted about yesterday will also be considered to be guests on Ballard Spahr’s weekly podcast program, Consumer Finance Monitor, where Alan would interview them about their papers. Consumer […]

Save the Date & Call for Abstracts: Consumer Law Scholars Conference 2024

We received the following announcement: Save the Date: CLSC 2024 We are pleased to announce the sixth annual Consumer Law Scholars Conference (CLSC), which will be held February 29-March 1, 2024, at Berkeley Law. Save the date! The purpose of the CLSC is to support in-progress scholarship, foster a community of consumer law scholars, and build connections […]

Rory Van Loo calls for more attention to consumer law

Rory Van Loo of BU has written The Public Stakes of Consumer Law: The Environment, the Economy, Health, Disinformation, and Beyond, 107 Minn. L. Rev. 2039 (2023). Here’s the abstract: Consumer law has a conflicted and narrow identity. It is most immediately a form of business law, governing market transactions between people and companies. Accordingly, […]