Category Archives: Uncategorized

California bans single-use plastic bags at supermarkets and other retail outlets

As the NYT explains, "Paper bags and reusable plastic bags will be available at checkout counters for a 10-cent fee designed to prod shoppers to remember their own reusable bags, and to reduce the number of plastic bags that end up clogging rivers, snagged on trees or taking up space in landfills." The oddly-named "American […]

Federal judge wants to bury summary judgment for many reasons, but especially because it harms employment-discrimination plaintiffs

Yep, that's the topic of Essay: From the 'No Spittin', No Cussin' and No Summary Judgment' Days of Employment Discrimination Litigation to the 'Defendant's Summary Judgment Affirmed Without Comment' Days: One Judge's Four-Decade Perspective by U.S. District Judge Mark W. Bennett. Here is the no-nonsense abstract: Nearly seventy-five years after its birth, the time has […]

Is the “economic recovery” really a continuing recession for most Americans?

That's what the economic data suggest, at least the data through 2012. After reproducing what Matthew Yglesias calls the most important chart about the American economy you'll see this year, Yglesias explains: For a long time, most of the gains from economic growth went to the bottom 90 percent of the income distribution. And, after […]

Housing first

Check out an illuminating New Yorker commentary about the success of government programs providing homes for homeless people. Many policy approaches to homelessness assume that society should help homeless people get other aspects of their lives in order before they transition to permanent housing. That’s the wrong order, argues the New Yorker’s James Surowiecki, with […]

Collecting debts on cars in the computerized world

Read this article by Michael Corkery and Jessica Sliver-Greenberg. Here's an excerpt: The thermometer showed a 103.5-degree fever, and her 10-year-old’s asthma was flaring up. Mary Bolender, who lives in Las Vegas, needed to get her daughter to an emergency room, but her 2005 Chrysler van would not start. The cause was not a mechanical […]

ContractsProf Blog Symposium on Ben-Shahar & Schneider’s Book on Disclosure

by Jeff Sovern Here.  The symposium, on Ben-Shahar's and Schneider's More Than You Wanted to Know: The Failure of Mandated Disclosure, has been running since last week and features contributions by names that will be familiar to regular readers of consumer law literature, including Lauren Willis of Loyola-LA, David Vladeck of Georgetown, Florencia Marotta-Wurgler of NYU, Nancy Kim of Cal Western, […]