That's a key issue addressed by law prof Alexandra Lahav in Mass Tort Class Actions – Past, Present, and Future. Here is the abstract: The judicial experiment with mass tort class actions was an anemic one, albeit somewhat spectacular in a few cases that have captured the academic and professional imagination. This Essay explains that the […]
by Jeff Sovern Here, in The News-Press. Debt buyers use small claims courts to get judgments to enforce debts even though it is not clear how often those debt buyers can prove the facts pertaining to the debt. Excerpt: Of more than 1,800 small claims cases filed in Lee County over the first five months […]
According to the Department of Education, there's about $1.4 trillion in outstanding U.S. student loan debt, $137 billion of which is in default (with 1.1 million students going into default in 2016 alone). No long-term solutions are on the horizon. Meanwhile, as Danielle Douglas-Gabrielle explains in this article,"thousands of Virginia students [are] caught in a […]
The New York Times has gotten a hold of a draft of the federal government's climate science special report. The draft report is slated to be part of the National Climate Assessment, which is required by Congress every 4 years. The draft report represents the collective judgment of scientists from, among other places, 13 federal agencies. […]
Chuck Muth has written If Congress Won’t Protect Us from Wells Fargo, then at Least Get Out of the Way. Here's an excerpt: Now, as a conservative I fully support the right of private individuals to freely and voluntarily contract with each other * * * But to require someone to sign away a CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT […]
Here. The graph in the article is mind-boggling.
From the New York Times: When you wash your hair, clean or moisturize your skin, polish your nails, or put on makeup, deodorant or sunscreen, do you ever think about whether the product you’re using may do more harm than good? Maybe you should. Thanks to a lack of federal regulations, the watchword for consumers […]
Here. Excerpt: [S]upport [to overturn the rule] in the Senate is uncertain. No Democrats are likely to back the effort, and Republicans, with their slim majority, can’t afford to lose more than two GOP votes. Several Republican senators have expressed reservations about voting to overturn the regulation, worried they may be portrayed as siding with […]
Jean R. Sternlight of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas has written Hurrah for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Consumer Arbitration As a Poster Child for Regulation, 48 St. Mary's Law Journal 343 (2016). Here is the abstract: Drawing on economic, psychological and philosophical considerations, this Essay considers whether consumers should be "free" to "agree" […]
by Jeff Sovern According to Politico, President Trump first used the phrase "drain the swamp" in a speech on October 17, 2016, in which he announced an ethics plan to, in fact, drain the swamp. Here's the Washington Post's quote of what he said draining the swamp meant: First: I am going to re-institute a […]