[Update: David and I were clearly on the same page this morning — by the time I finished writing this post, he had already just posted on the same case. I'll leave my thoughts up as a complement to his.] In an opinion sympathetic in tone to the problems of ordinary consumers but ultimately unable […]
Category Archives: Uncategorized
by Brian Wolfman According to this Associated Press story, in 2012, the Vermont Attorney General sued a company called Vermints under Vermont’s consumer protection law alleging that Vermints had mislabeled its mints “Vermont’s All-Natural Mints” (my emphasis). What was the AG’s beef with the label? According to the suit, the company is Massachusetts-based and the […]
One might have expected this, but here’s a study to back it up: a college applicant’s social network use can play a significant role in admissions. According to a study by Kaplan (as reported in this New York Times article from November), almost a third of 381 college admission officers surveyed said they “visited an […]
We've covered extensively the law and policy fight against obesity and noted that there's been some (barely) measurable progress recently. That's the theme of this article from The Economist. Here's an excerpt: The overweight American, slurping a bucket of soda in his car, is an international stereotype. Thankfully, fewer Americans fit the mould. Obesity rates among […]
Do you think that some food marketers (mis)label junky foods to try to make them seem healthy? Jennifer Pomeranz does, and she's written A Comprehensive Strategy to Overhaul FDA Authority for Misleading Food Labels to explain how, in her view, the Food and Drug Administration can make food labels less misleading, consistent with the First […]
We've posted here and here about how consumers can try to avoid harm from the Target (and similar) data breaches. Perhaps the best medicine is putting a security freeze on your credit report. Here, Michelle Singletary describes that process in some detail.
Those are the subjects of Cost-Benefit Analysis of Financial Regulation: Case Studies and Implications, by law professor John Coates. Here is the abstract: Some members of Congress, the D.C. Circuit, and legal academia are promoting a particular, abstract form of cost-benefit analysis for financial regulation: judicially enforced quantification. How would CBA work in practice, if […]
Perhaps sign-ups on the Affordable Care Act's exchanges are lagging, but, as explained in this article by Sabrina Tavernise, in states that have accepted the Act's medicaid expansion, the Act is providing health insurance to many people who previously lacked it. "In West Virginia," for example, "where the Democratic governor agreed to expand Medicaid eligibility, the […]
So says consumer law professor Creola Johnson of Ohio State in her new book, Is a Law Degree Still Worth the Price?
by Allen B. Isaacson, guest blogger On Thursday, Geoffrey Stone, University of Chicago’s Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, summarized the findings of a 300-page report titled Liberty and Security in a Changing World, released on December 12th by a panel of five law and intelligence experts (including Stone) appointed by President Obama […]