by Jeff Sovern Housing Wire reports in Congressional Republicans mull bill to add CFPB oversight, that the House will vote this week on a bill to replace the CFPB's director with a commission and subject it to the congressional appropriation process. The bill is not expected to receive a warm welcome in the Senate or at […]
Those are the topics considered in law teacher Joseph Singer's new article Foreclosure and the Failures of Formality, or Subprime Mortgage Conundrums and How to Fix Them. Start with the abstract: The subprime mortgage crisis was not only an economic disaster but posed challenges to traditional rules of property law. Banks helped create the crisis […]
That's the topic of Why Who Does What Matters: Governmental Design, Agency Performance, the CFPB and PPACA by law teachers David Hyman and William Kovacic. Here's the abstract: How should the federal government be organized – and who (i.e., which departments, agencies, bureaus, and commissions) should do what? The issue is not new: President James […]
In August we posted a link to a paper Albany's Elizabeth Renuart had written, Uneasy Intersections: The Right to Foreclose and the U.C.C., 48 Wake Forest L. Rev. 1205 (2013), The paper has already drawn more than 500 downloads. An updated version is now available. Here is the revised abstract: Historically, the practice of […]
Here. Tim Danahey interviews Theresa Amato of Fair Contracts.org and Citizen Works. Theresa discusses how consumer contracts reduce consumers to "contract serfdom" and also explores issues governing arbitration clauses. Worth a listen, and if you are teaching consumer law this semester, this merits passing on to students as a painless way to learn about consumer protection […]
The Real News Network has produced Will a $10 Minimum Wage Get All Working Americans Out of Poverty? As its title suggests, RNN's story addresses whether President Obama and the Democratic party's proposal to take the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour will provide a non-poverty-level wage. To watch the story, you can click on […]
by Jeff Sovern There's been a lot of discussion recently about whether the Post Office should offer banking services. The idea is that it could serve the unbanked, and that its many existing branches would cover the entire country (Disclosure: one of my brothers works for the Postal Service, though we haven't discussed this idea). For […]
Today the Supreme Court refused the City of Burbank's request to rehear Dahlia v. Rodriguez, in which the en banc Ninth Circuit reinstated the claim of a Burbank police officer who was suspended for reporting that his fellow officers were beating suspects — a victory for the First Amendment and for public oversight of law […]
Following up on our recent coverage of the FCC's efforts to promote net neutrality (see here and here), it's worth noting this Washington Post analysis of a recent deal between Comcast and Neflix. The headline is a good summary: "Comcast’s deal with Netflix makes network neutrality obsolete."
by Deepak Gupta Despite an unusually full-throated public-relations campaign and amicus effort by the tort-reform lobby, the Supreme Court this morning turned aside three petitions for certiorari from the Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits concerning the propriety of class certification in cases alleging that moldy washing machines sold to consumers were defective. Today's denial is […]