Robin Bradley Kar of Illinois has written The Challenge of Boilerplate, forthcoming in Jotwell. Here's the abstract: Although Margaret Jane Radin is perhaps best known for her work in property theory, she has recently been focusing her formidable intellect on questions of contract. Boilerplate reflects her first book length treatment of these topics, and there […]
George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon University – Department of Social and Decision Sciences ("CMU"), Cass R. Sunstein of Harvard Law School, and Russell Golman, also of CMU, have written Disclosure: Psychology Changes Everything. Here's the abstract: We review literature examining the effects of laws and regulations that require public disclosure of information. These requirements are […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has just launched this website filled with data provided by financial institutions under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), which requires those institutions to report and publicly disclose information about mortgages. HMDA became law in 1975 and is implemented through Regulation C. In 2009, the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation […]
After the Supreme Court's rulings in American Express v. Italian Colors and AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, why wouldn't an employer, whenever possible, force its employees into individual arbitrations over employment disputes through adhesive arbitration clauses? At least, those rulings generally should allow private, non-unionized employers to avoid class dispute resolution (whether in court or before […]
Michael Birnhack of Tel Aviv University has written S-M-L-XL Data: Big Data as a New Informational Privacy Paradigm. Here's the abstract: Can informational privacy law survive Big Data? A few scholars have pointed to the inadequacy of the current legal framework to Big Data, especially the collapse of notice and consent, the principles of data […]
by Brian Wolfman As we've reported in the past (for instance, here), states with governors and/or legislatures who don't like the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have threatened not to participate in the Act's Medicaid expansion (which the Supreme Court said could not be forced on the states by Congress under the Constitution's "Spending Clause"). As […]
Jean Braucher of Arizona haas written Scamming Considered as One of the Exact Sciences: 19th Century American Literature Foreshadows Insights of Behavioral Economics. Here's the abstract: Nineteenth century American literary masters Edgar Allen Poe, Herman Melville, and Mark Twain (with co-author Charles Dudley Warner) all examined scamming in their largely pre-regulatory time. These authors made […]
That's the name of this article by law professor Frank Pasquale. Here is the abstract: A bad credit score may cost a borrower tens of thousands of dollars, but it is not clear how it is calculated. The formula is a trade secret, immune from scrutiny. Lenders are moving beyond scoring to “credit analytics,” which […]
Chipotle is causing a stir with an evocative new video: A silent scarecrow working in a foodlike-substance factory grows dismayed by the treatment of animals while Fiona Apple croons a haunting reinterpretion of "Pure Imagination" from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Soon, the scarecrow has an epiphany. He strikes out on his own and opens a food stand […]
By Paul Bland On Twitter: @PBlandBland In the wake of recent Supreme Court decisions, forced arbitration clauses are generally enforced unless a corporation sticks something particularly overreaching and unfair in its arbitration clause, or drafts an arbitration clause in an unusually stupid way. A U.S. district court in Nevada just found that Zappos did both […]