James E. McNulty a finance professor at Florida Atlantic University has written Consumer Protection Settlements: Theory and Policy. Here's the abstract: Lawsuits have a deterrent effect, but this is mitigated if settlements are routine. Regulators and judges should consider that a firm contemplating predatory activity directed at financially unsophisticated individuals might have built an estimate of […]
Category Archives: Consumer Law Scholarship
Samuel Becher of Victoria University of Wellington and Uri Benoliel of Ramat Gan Law School have written Dark Contracts. Here is the abstract: Millions of consumers are routinely subject to non-transparent consumer contracts. Such contracts undermine fundamental contract law notions. They leave consumers uninformed and disempowered. They also encourage unethical behavior and undercut the ability of […]
Charlotte Tschider of Loyola of Chicago has written Meaningful Choice: A History of Consent and Alternatives to the Consent Myth, 22 N.C. J.L. & Tech. 617 (2021). Here is the abstract: Although the first legal conceptions of commercial privacy were identified in Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis’s foundational 1890 article, The Right to Privacy, conceptually, […]
Adam S. Zimmerman of Loyola of Los Angeles has written The Class Appeal, 89 University of Chicago Law Review (Forthcoming 2022). Here's the abstract: For a wide variety of claims against the government, the federal courthouse doors are closed to all but those brought by powerful, organized interests. This is because hundreds of laws—colloquially known […]
by Jeff Sovern I have started submitting my article, Six Scandals: Why We Need Consumer Protection Laws Instead of Just Markets, to law reviews and in hopes of winning the law review lottery, decided to try my luck at the Harvard Law Review and Yale Law Journal (as if, as my students said about twenty […]
Vijay Raghavan of Brooklyn has written Consumer Law's Equity Gap, Utah Law Review (forthcoming 2022). Here is the abstract: This article is about the views that shape and constrain the development of consumer law. Consider the market for short-term, high-cost loans. Policymakers tend to justify intervening in these markets on inefficiency grounds (consumers exhibit present bias) […]
by Jeff Sovern I have revised my article, Six Scandals: Why We Need Consumer Protection Laws Instead of Just Markets, to take into account the many helpful comments I received at the Berkeley Consumer Law Scholars Conference. Here is the updated abstract: Markets are powerful mechanisms for serving consumers. Some critics of regulation have suggested […]
Keith B. Anderson of the Federal Trade Commission – Bureau of Economics has written To Whom Do Victims of Mass-Market Consumer Fraud Complain?. Here is the abstract: Utilizing data from surveys of mass-market consumer fraud sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission in 2005, 2011, and 2017, this paper explores whether victims of such mass-market consumer frauds […]
Shelly Kreiczer-Levy of Ramat Gan College of Law & Business; Global Affiliated Faculty, The Vulnerability and Human Condition Program, Emory Law School has written The Duties of Online Marketplaces 58 San Diego Law Review (2021). Here's the abstract: Is Amazon a seller for the purpose of product liability law? Is it obligated to stop price gouging by […]
Farshad Ghodoosi of the David Nazarian School of Business & Economics, California State University, Northridge and Monica Sharif of California State University, Los Angeles have written Justice in Arbitration: The Consumer Perspective, International Journal of Conflict Management (2021). Here is the abstract: Purpose: Arbitration—a binding private third-party adjudication—has been the primary legal way for resolution […]