Will the Government’s Bank of America Mortgage Fraud Suit Deter Future Fraud?

Yesterday, we posted about the government's fraud suit against Bank of America. Today's Washington Post has this coverage, which quotes a former regulator who says that the suit is not big enough to deter future fraudulent conduct and who ties deterrence to the threat of jail time for bank executives: “This is an act of […]

Debt Collection Lawyers Now Under the CFPB’s Jurisdiction

Read about it in this National Law Journal article. Here's an excerpt: Big banks, little banks, credit card companies, student lenders – it seems like just about every player in the financial services industry has complained about the power of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Now it's the lawyers' turn. On October 24, the CFPB […]

Paper on Whether the Treatment of Student Loans in Bankruptcy Should be Changed

Daniel A. Austin of Northeastern has written The Indentured Generation: Bankruptcy and Student Loan Debt, 53 Santa Clara Law Review (forthcoming)  Here's the abstract: A generation of Americans has borrowed heavily for their education, and hundreds of thousands of them are deeply in debt. Some 37 million Americans owe a total of approximately $1 trillion […]

Company’s case against Consumer Product Safety Commission sealed and decided based on secret proceedings; Public Citizen appeals

Pursuant to congressional mandate, since March 2011 the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has maintained an electronic database of reports of harm associated with consumer products. This database serves a crucial function in helping alert consumers to dangerous products; before the database existed, as Public Citizen has reported, the CPSC took on average more than […]

Is the LSAT Administered in Violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act?

Yes, according to the U.S. Department of Justice and the California Fair Employment Department. They have sued the Law School Admission Council claiming that it has violated the Americans Disabilities Act in administering the Law School Admissions Test. Karen Sloane explains here. Here's an excerpt: A 29-year-old congressional aide claims his dyslexia impairs his ability […]

Tax Policy And Kids’ Learning Abilities

A new empirical economic study (go here and here) by Alexander Gelber and Matthew Weinzierl says that some tax policies that put more money in the pocket of low-income U.S. parents are associated positively with their children's academic abilities. This study comes at an interesting time given the recent debate about whether there should be […]