Category Archives: Consumer Law Scholarship

CRL Chapter on Car-Title Lending

Susanna  Montezemolo of the Center for Responsible Lending haas written Car-Title Lending.  Here is the abstract: Provides an overview of car-title lending and its impact on U.S. households. Car-title lending — making expensive loans secured by the title of a vehicle a borrower owns outright — has become a multi-billion dollar industry in the U.S. […]

Elizabeth Renuart Updates Foreclosure Paper

In August we posted a link to a paper Albany's Elizabeth Renuart had written, Uneasy Intersections: The Right to Foreclose and the U.C.C., 48 Wake Forest L. Rev. 1205 (2013),    The paper has already drawn more than 500 downloads.  An updated version is now available.  Here is the revised abstract: Historically, the practice of […]

Writings on the Postal Service Offering Banking Services

by Jeff Sovern There's been a lot of discussion recently about whether the Post Office should offer banking services.  The idea is that it could serve the unbanked, and that its many existing branches would cover the entire country (Disclosure: one of my brothers works for the Postal Service, though we haven't discussed this idea).  For […]

Mark Budnitz Article on Georgia’s Primary Consumer Protection Statute

Mark Elliott Budnitz of Georgia State has written Buyer Beware: Georgia Consumers Can't Rely on the Fair Business Practices Act, 6 John Marshall Law Journal  507 (2013).  Here is the abstract: In Novare Group, Inc. v. Sarif, the Georgia Supreme Court rejected the plaintiffs' claim that the defendant brokers and developers violated the Georgia Fair […]

Economists’ Paper: Regulating Automobiles: The Consequences for Consumers

Colleen E. Haight of San Jose State University and Derek Thieme of George Mason University's Mercatus Center have written Regulating Automobiles: The Consequences for Consumers.  Here is the abstract: Automobiles are ubiquitous. Most Americans take at least one car trip every day to get to work or school or to run household errands. The automobile […]

IMF Researchers on the Impact of Foreclosure Laws on the Supply of Credit

Jihad Dagher and Yangfan Sun, both of the International Monetary Fund, have written Borrower Protection and the Supply of Credit: Evidence from Foreclosure Laws.  Here's the abstract: Laws governing the foreclosure process, which vary across jurisdictions, have direct consequences on creditors’ losses from borrower default, and thus, could potentially affect lending decisions. Our empirical strategy […]

Fed Staff Article on Payment Fraud Liability

Sandeep Dhameja, Katy R. Jacob and Richard D. Porter, all of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, have written Clarifying Liability for Twenty-First-Century Payment Fraud, 37 Economic Perspectives (2013).  Here's the abstract: This article examines the governance structure of retail payments in the United States, provides an overview of payment fraud, and discusses in depth […]

Suffolk Law Review Symposium on Credit Scoring and Reporting Now Available Online

Here. Here's a list of the articles: Credit Reports and Employment: Findings from the 2012 National Survey on Credit Card Debt of Low- and Middle-Income Households  by Amy Traub · Medical Debt and Its Relevance When Assessing Creditworthiness by Mark Rukavina  Discriminatory Effects of Credit Scoring on Communities of Color by Lisa Rice and Deidre Swesnik The Misconception of […]

Paper on the Ethics of Payment Mechanisms

James Angel of Georgetown's Finance Department and Douglas M. McCabe of Georgetown's Management Department have written The Ethics of Payments: Paper, Plastic, or Bitcoin?  Here is the abstract: Individuals and businesses make billions of payments every day in various forms. Payers have choices about what forms of payment they will make, and payees also have […]

Should substantive due process stop courts from enforcing excessive penalties in consumer contracts?

For years now, some have argued that if substantive due process prohibits disproportionately large punitive damages awards against major corporations, it also should stop courts from enforcing excessive contract damages against consumers. See Seana Valentine Shiffrin, Are Credit Card Late Fees Unconstitutional?, 15 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 457, 460 (2006). Two Ninth Circuit judges […]