Category Archives: Consumer Law Scholarship

Paper on Contract Law and the Subprime Crisis

Chunlin Leonhard of Loyola University New Orleans has written The Subprime Mortgage Crisis and Economic Checks and Balances, Banking & Financial Services Policy Report, June 2012, at 15.  Here's the abstract: This article examines contract law’s role in the subprime mortgage crisis, specifically in the way that the laissez faire paradigm of traditional contract law […]

Paper on Forum Shopping in Debt Collection

Judith L. Fox of Notre Dame has written How Forum Determines Substance in Judicial Debt Collection, 31 Banking and Financial Services Rev. 11 (August 2012). Here's the abstract: In an email to the Small Claims Task Force, a committee appointed by the Indiana Supreme Court to investigate allegations of abuse in the Marion County Small […]

Paper on the Oldest Financial Institution

Paige Marta Skiba of Vanderbilt, Marieke Bos of Stockholm University – Swedish Institute for Social Research and Susan Carter of the United States Military Academy have written The Pawn Industry and Its Customers: The United States and Europe.  Here's the abstract: As humankind’s oldest financial institution, pawnbroking has served the financial needs of low-income families […]

Paper on Behavioral Economic Approach to Credit Reporting Consumer Protection

Adi Osovsky, a Harvard SJD candidate, has written The Misconception of the Consumer as a Homo Economicus: A Behavioral Economic Approach to Consumer Protection in the Credit Reporting System, forthcoming in the Suffolk University Law Review.  Here's the abstract: The significant increase in the number of consumer transactions, along with the expansion of information technology, […]

Amitai Etzioni Paper on Privacy Merchants

Amitai Etzioni has written The Privacy Merchants: What is to Be Done?  Here is the abstract: Rights have been long understood, first and foremost, as protection of the private from the public, the individual from the State. True, we also recognize positive rights (such as socioeconomic rights) and the government’s duty to protect citizens from violations […]

David Reiss on Eminent Domain and Underwater Loans

David J. Reiss of Brooklyn has written Comment on the Use of Eminent Domain to Restructure Performing Loans.  Here is the abstract: There has been a lot of fear-mongering by financial industry trade groups over the widespread use of eminent domain to restructure residential mortgages. While there may be legitimate business reasons to oppose its […]

Martin & Longa Study of Whether Payday and Title Loans Serve the Middle Class

Nathalie Martin and Ernesto A. Longa, both of New Mexico have written High-Interest Loans and Class: Do Payday and Title Loans Really Serve the Middle Class?, 24 Loyola Consumer Law Reporter 524 (2012). Here's the abstract: This symposium article addresses the question of whether payday and title lenders serve primarily the working poor, as some critics […]

Paper on Behavioral Advertising

Chris Jay Hoofnagle of Berkeley, Ashkan Soltani of Berkeley's School of Information, Nathan Good of Good Research, Dietrich James Wambach, a student at Wyoming, and Mika Ayenson of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute have written Behavioral Advertising: The Offer You Cannot Refuse, 6 Harvard Law & Policy Review 273 (2012).  Here's the abstract: At UC Berkeley, […]

Lauren Willis Paper: When Nudges Fail

Lauren E. Willis  of Loyola Los Angeles, always a thoughtful writer, has authored When Nudges Fail: Slippery Defaults.  Here's the abstract: Inspired by the success of “automatic enrollment” in increasing participation in defined contribution retirement savings plans, policymakers have put similar policy defaults in place in a variety of other contexts, from checking account overdraft […]

Second Liens and Mortgage Modifications

Vicki Been of NYU, Howell E. Jackson of Harvard, and Mark A. Willis of NYU have written Essay: Sticky Seconds – The Problems Second Liens Pose to the Resolution of Distressed Mortgages.  Here's the abstract:  Almost five years into the foreclosure crisis, policymakers, the mortgage industry, consumers and taxpayers all express disappointment over the slow […]