Category Archives: Consumer Law Scholarship

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 […]

Hunt paper: The Failed Legal Case Against Student Debt Jubilee

John P. Hunt of UC-Davis has written The Failed Legal Case Against Student Debt Jubilee. Here is the abstract: This paper reviews and rebuts the arguments presented to date that the Executive lacks authority to engage in mass student loan cancellation. Legality skeptics have presented no compelling argument that the relevant statutory text, which authorizes the […]

Nielson Paper Asks What Happens If the FTC Becomes a Serious Rulemaker?

Aaron L. Nielson of Brigham Young has written What Happens If the FTC Becomes a Serious Rulemaker? forthcoming in FTC's Rᴜʟᴇᴍᴀᴋɪɴɢ Aᴜᴛʜᴏʀɪᴛʏ (Concurrences 2022). Here's the abstract: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is no one’s idea of a serious rulemaker. To the contrary, the FTC is in many respects a law enforcement agency that operates […]

CFP: Symposium on AI, Consumer Credit, and Discrimination

We received the following call for papers: Nikita Aggarwal, Matt Bruckner, Kathleen Engel and Cre Johnson are putting together proposals for a symposium on AI, Consumer Credit, and Discrimination. They are applying to multiple law reviews on a rolling basis. If you have a project that fits within the proposed topic and are interested in […]

CFP: Beyond Fresh Start: Fixing the Broken Student Loan Default and Collection System

We received the following Call for Papers: On April 6, 2022, in addition to announcing an extension of the federal student loan payment pause, the White House announced that the U.S. Department of Education is taking steps to  give a fresh start to millions of struggling borrowers who are currently in default on their federal […]

Inaugural episode of Consumer Law and Economic Justice Podcast now available

Here. The first episode features a conversation with Abbye Atkinson, professor at Berkeley Law, about her article, Borrowing Equality, published in the Columbia Law Review, and the relationship among credit, debt, social relationships, inequality, and what should be done to pave the way for a better world for borrowers. The podcast will broadcast conversations with […]

Study finds borrower race does not affect appraiser valuation

Brent W. Ambrose of Pennsylvania State, James Conklin of Georgia, N. Edward Coulson of California, Irvine – Paul Merage School of Business, Moussa Diop of USC, and Luis A. Lopez of the University of Illinois at Chicago have written Does Appraiser and Borrower Race Affect Valuation? Here’s the abstract: Following concerns about undervaluation of minority-owned […]

Meirav Furth’s important article: Retail Race Discrimination

Meirav Furth of UCLA and Tel-Aviv University has written Retail Race Discrimination. Here's the abstract: This Article investigates everyday race discrimination while shopping in clothing stores of different price ranges. It reports on an original field experiment which examines the combined effects of race and gender on consumers’ shopping experiences and outcomes. Nineteen testers—Black and white […]