Daniel A. Austin of Northeastern has written Student Loan Debt in Bankruptcy: An Empirical Assessment, forthcoming in the Suffolk Law Review. Here's the abstract: Education loan debt in the U.S. recently reached $1.2 trillion. Thirty-nine million Americans — nearly 20% of U.S. households — owe student loans, and student loans are by far the fastest […]
by Deepak Gupta The payday lenders' main trade association, the Community Financial Services Association, brought an unusual lawsuit this week against three federal regulators — the Fed, the FDIC, and the OCC — in an effort to challenge a controversial federal initiative known as "Operation Choke Point." The case was filed in federal district court […]
by Paul Alan Levy Michael Chichester, an Arizonan who does social media promotion on a contract basis for various firms, was annoyed when he saw an announcement from Santy Integrated, a local advertising company, recruiting "social media interns" to help promote its clients’ brands on a volunteer basis. It was his belief — which seemed to […]
Chris Jay Hoofnagle and Jennifer M. Urban, both of Berkeley, have written Alan Westin's Privacy Homo Economicus, 49 Wake Forest Law Review 261 (2014). Here's the abstract: Homo economicus reliably makes an appearance in regulatory debates concerning information privacy. Under the still-dominant U.S. “notice and choice” approach to consumer information privacy, the rational consumer is […]
by Paul Alan Levy At a time when many federal agencies are moving to exert greater control over their names and seals, both seeking to monetize them as well as to engage in old-fashioned trademark bullying, it is nice to see that the Department of Health and Human Services has decided to pull back from […]
by Jeff Sovern Here, in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Arthur Bryant of Public Justice has this post, entitled Access to Justice At Stake with Federal Rules Changes, about “the critical importance of the Federal Rules process” and the importance of fair rules to ensure access to the civil justice system. [Note, 6/5/14 – The link is not currently working. Seems to be a problem […]
by Brian Wolfman In Eubank v. Pella Corporation, No. 13-2091 (June 2, 2014), Judge Richard Posner makes so many useful points about class-action settlements that it's not sensible to try to summarize them here. Read the opinion for yourself! Just one point for now: As I've mentioned before, class-action settlement proponents often argue that one […]
The federal Food & Drug Administration has launched what it's calling Open FDA. Here's how the agency is describing its new program: OpenFDA is specifically designed to make it easier for web developers, researchers, and the public to access and use the many large, important, health data sets collected by the agency. These publicly available […]
by Paul Alan Levy The DC Court of Appeals has reversed the denial of a special motion to quash a subpoena seeking to identify the anonymous defendant in a defamation action. The suit, Burke v. Doe, was brought by lawyer Susan Burke, who complained that her Wikipedia entry had been modified to include false statements relating […]