Category Archives: Consumer Law Scholarship

Paper on the FTC’s power to regulate discriminatory AI

Andrew D. Selbst of UCLA and Solon Barocas of Microsoft Research and Cornell have written Unfair Artificial Intelligence: How FTC Intervention Can Overcome the Limitations of Discrimination Law, 171 University of Pennsylvania Law Review __ (forthcoming). Here is the abstract: The Federal Trade Commission has indicated that it intends to regulate discriminatory AI products and services. […]

My latest paper: Not-So-Smartphone Disclosures

by Jeff Sovern I co-authored it with Nahal Heydari.  It's available here. And here's the abstract: Consumers increasingly engage in financial transactions on smartphones, including obtaining loans. Lawmakers depend on mandatory disclosures to alert consumers when loan terms are excessive. When those disclosures are provided on the tiny screen of a mobile phone, can consumers […]

Bruckner & Ryan paper compares complaints about fintech and traditional student loan lenders & servicers

Matthew A. Bruckner of Howard and CJ Ryan of Louisville and the American Bar Foundation have written The Magic of Fintech? Insights for a Regulatory Agenda from Analyzing Student Loan Complaints Filed with the CFPB, Dickinson Law Review, Forthcoming 2022. Here’s the abstract: This paper looks at consumer complaints about student loan lenders and servicers […]

Paper responds to Wilf-Townsend’s Assembly-Line Plaintiffs

Last year, we published a link to Daniel Wilf-Townsend's Harvard Law Review article  Assembly-Line Plaintiffs. Now Jessica Steinberg of George Washington, Colleen F. Shanahan of Columbia, Anna E. Carpenter of Utah, and Alyx Mark of Wesleyan's Dept. of Government and the American Bar Foundation have written a response to it, The Democratic (Il)legitimacy of Assembly-Line […]

Chao paper suggests unjust enrichment claims confer standing, even after TransUnion

Bernard Chao of Denver has written Unjust Enrichment: Standing Up for Privacy Rights. Here is the abstract: In TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, one of the country’s largest credit reporting agencies violated the Federal Credit Report Act (“FCRA”) by failing to “follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy . . ..” As a result, thousands of […]

Vijay Raghavan Essay: Shifting Burdens at the Fringe

Vijay Raghavan of Brooklyn has written Shifting Burdens at the Fringe, 102 Boston University Law Review (2022). Here’s the abstract: Scholars are increasingly arguing that consumer law can be a site of distribution. This raises at least two concerns: the classic argument associated with Louis Kaplow & Steven Shavell against redistributing income through legal rules, […]

Can you solve the mystery of why the Credit CARD Act treats penalty fees differently from penalty interest rates and other fees?

by Jeff Sovern When Congress enacted the Credit CARD Act of 2009, it provided that credit card penalty fees, like late fees, “shall be reasonable and proportional” and gave the Fed the power–later transferred to the CFPB–to set safe harbor amounts which would presumptively be reasonable and proportional. But it didn’t limit fees for credit […]

Osofsky & Thomas paper on the relationship between implicit bias and the home mortgage interest deduction

Leigh Osofsky and Kathleen DeLaney Thomas, both of North Carolina, have written Implicit Legislative Bias: The Case of the Mortgage Interest Deduction, 56 UC Davis Law Review (2022). Here is the abstract: The home mortgage interest deduction is over 100 years old. The deduction has been subject to increasing and, at times, withering criticism from […]

Paper on algorithmic price discrimination and consumer protection

Mateusz Grochowski of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law; Yale Law School; Polish Academy of Sciences – Institute of Legal Studies; Agnieszka Jabłonowska of the University of Lodz – Faculty of Law and Administration; European University Institute – Department of Law (LAW); Francesca Lagioia of the European University Institute – Department […]