Category Archives: Consumer Law Scholarship

Study Finds Default Counseling Helpful

J. Michael Collins of the University of Wisconsin – Madison – Center for Financial Security, Maximilian D. Schmeiser of the Federal Reserve Board, and Carly Urban of the University of Wisconsin – Madison – Department of Economics have written Protecting Homeowners: Foreclosure Counseling Policies and Modifications of Mortgage Terms. Here's the abstract: Millions of homeowners […]

Creola Johnson on the CFPB and Payday Lending

Creola Johnson of Ohio State has written America's First Consumer Financial Watchdog Is on a Leash: Can the CFPB Use Its Authority to Declare Payday-Loan Practices Unfair, Abusive, and Deceptive? 61 Catholic University Law Review (2012). Here's the abstract: To stop payday lenders from skirting state laws, this Article asserts that the CFPB should exercise […]

Marotta-Wurgler & Taylor on Changes in Consumer Standard Form Contracts

Florencia Marotta-Wurgler of NYU and Robert Brendan Taylor of Kirkland & Ellis have written Set in Stone? Change and Innovation in Consumer Standard Form Contracts for the Seventh Annual Conference on Empirical Studies.  Here's the abstract: This article studies the rate, direction, and determinants of change in consumer standard form contracting. We examine what changed […]

David Horton Paper on the Federal Arbitration Act Preemption

David Horton of UC Davis has written Federal Arbitration Act Preemption, Purposivism, and State Public Policy, 101 Georgetown law Journal (2013).  Here's the abstract: The relationship between the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) and state public policy has long been unsettled. According to some judges, scholars, and litigants, the FAA precludes courts from invalidating arbitration clauses […]

Papers on Privacy

Ira Rubinstein of NYU's Information Law Institut has written Big Data: The End of Privacy or a New Beginning?  Here's the abstract: “Big data” refers to novel ways in which organizations, including government and businesses, combine diverse digital data sets and then use statistics and other data mining techniques to extract from them both hidden […]

Lea Krivinskas Shepard on Discrimination in Consumer Protection

Lea Krivinskas Shepard of Loyola Chicago has written Toward a Stronger Financial History Antidiscrimination Norm, 53 Boston College Law Review (2012).  Here's the abstract: This Article examines a topic at the intersection of consumer protection and antidiscrimination law: the use by employers and licensing organizations of applicants’ credit reports and financial histories in the hiring […]

Victor Stango: Are Payday Lending Markets Competitive?

Victor Stango of UC Davis Graduate School of Management has written Are Payday Lending Markets Competitive? Regulation (Fall 2012) at 26.  Here's the abstract: The rapid and widespread growth of the payday loan market has sparked considerable controversy, in part regarding the “high” prices charged for these loans. This article presents several new pieces of […]

Shay Lavie Paper on Class Actions

Shay Lavie of Harvard has written The Malleability of Collective Litigation, forthcoming in the Notre Dame Law Review. Here is the abstract: In Wal-Mart v. Dukes (131 S.Ct. 2541 [2011]), Wal-Mart avoided class action because employment decisions were made by local supervisors. However, it was Wal-Mart who chose to delegate discretion; by doing so, it […]

Paper on Whether the Treatment of Student Loans in Bankruptcy Should be Changed

Daniel A. Austin of Northeastern has written The Indentured Generation: Bankruptcy and Student Loan Debt, 53 Santa Clara Law Review (forthcoming)  Here's the abstract: A generation of Americans has borrowed heavily for their education, and hundreds of thousands of them are deeply in debt. Some 37 million Americans owe a total of approximately $1 trillion […]

Oren Bar-Gill: Seduction by Contract

Oren Bar-Gill has written Seduction by Contract: Law, Economics and Psychology in Consumer Markets (Oxford University Press 2012).  The Introduction is available here. Here's the abstract: Consumers routinely enter into contracts with providers of goods and services. These contracts are designed by sophisticated sellers to exploit the psychological biases of consumers. They provide short-term benefits, while imposing […]