by Jeff Sovern The Journal of Consumer Affairs published my paper, Fixing Consumer Protection Laws So Borrowers Understand Their Payment Obligations, 48 Journal Consumer Affairs 17 (2014). Here is the abstract: The millions of consumers who defaulted on their mortgages in recent years should all have received disclosures mandated by the federal Truth in Lending […]
Category Archives: Consumer Law Scholarship
Larry Kirsch, Roert N. Mayer and Norman I. Silber of Hofstra have authored, The CFPB and Payday Lending: New Agency/Old Problem, 48 Journal of Consumer Affairs 1 (2014). Here's the abstract: The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 brings nonbank payday lenders under federal regulation for the first time. The question of precisely how to regulate the payday […]
Joshua Mitts of Sullivan & Cromwell has written How Effective is Mandatory Disclosure? Here's the abstract: Mandatory disclosure lies at the cornerstone of consumer protection law but its efficacy is unclear. I conduct one of the first online experiments on mandatory disclosure by evaluating a recent proposal to warn consumers of unexpected, unfavorable terms. To […]
Bruce Wardhaugh of the School of Law–Queen's University Belfast haas written Unveiling Fairness for the Consumer: The Law, Economics and Justice of Expanded Arbitration, forthcoming in the Loyola Consumer Law Review. Here is the abstract: In recent years, the US Supreme Court has rather controversially extended the ambit of the Federal Arbitration Act to extend […]
Peter A. Holland of Maryland has written Junk Justice: A Statistical Analysis of 4,400 Lawsuits Filed by Debt Buyers, 26 Loyola Consumer Law Reporter 179 (2014). Here's the abstract: Debt buyers have flooded courts nationwide with collection lawsuits against consumers. This article reports the findings from the broadest in-depth study of debt buyer litigation outcomes […]
Dennis D. Hirsch of Capital has written In Search of the Holy Grail: Achieving Global Privacy Rules Through Sector-Based Codes of Conduct, 74 Ohio St. L.J. (2013). Here is the abstract: The movement of personal data across national borders is fundamental to the Internet economy. Yet the laws that govern such data flows remain national […]
Adam J. Levitin of Georgetown and Janneke Ratcliffe the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Center for Community Capital have written Rethinking Duties to Serve in Housing Finance, in Homeownership Built to Last: Lessons from the Housing Crisis on Sustaining Homeownership for Low-Income and Minority Families (Brookings 2014). Here is the abstract: In this […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]