Mark Elliott Budnitz of Georgia State has written Mobile Financial Services: The Need for a Comprehensive Consumer Protection Law, 27 Banking & Finance Law Review (2012). Here's the abstract: The article first describes mobile financial services for consumers and the types of companies participating in the provision of those services. Anticipated consumer problems are explored, […]
In this column, Mike Jacobson, head of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, describes the efforts of sugared-soda manufacturers to make their products sound healthy even though they are often a straight shot toward obesity. How does a manufacturer do this? It sells pretty much the same sugar-laden product, but, for example, adds some […]
By Brian Wolfman In 2009, the Supreme Court held 6-3 in Wyeth v. Levine that, in general, FDA approval of a brand-name prescription drug and its labeling does not preempt a state-law damages claim premised on the drug manufacturer's failure to warn of the drug's hazards. I wrote an article on the implications of that […]
As you assess whether some or all of the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire, bear in mind that the popular notion that Americans are suffering under a high and ever-increasing tax burden is nonsense. That's right: It's just not true. To the contrary, taxes are at historical lows. We have covered this […]
Ralph Nader explains in this op-ed that Congress should impose a small tax on trades of stocks and other financial products, such as derivatives. The tax would never exceed 1/2 of 1 percent of the value of the traded product, with the hardest hit on short-term investments. Here's an excerpt: In the debate over the […]
Next month, David Vladeck will a leave the helm of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection–by all accounts reinvograted under his dynamic leadership–to go back to Georgetown Law. Jeff Gelles, the Philadelphia Inquirer's consumer columnist, attempts to sum up David's tenure in a piece entitled "Consumer chief leaves FTC a feistier place." A snippet: Speaking […]
by Jeff Sovern Here. The piece is by GW's Jeffrey Rosen and explores how online marketers gather and use information about consumers. Rosen describes how he visited different web sites using two different browsers, as a result of which one online marketer, BlueKai, created two inconsistent personae for him. BlueKai, incidentally, allows consumers to see […]
Daniel J. Solove of GW has written Privacy Self-Management and the Consent Paradox, 126 Harvard Law Review (2013). Here's the abstract: The current regulatory approach for protecting privacy involves what I refer to as the “privacy self-management model” – the law provides people with a set of rights to enable them to decide for themselves […]
Here. Nice to see consumer law getting attention in petitions.
We've covered the issue of the nation's huge student loan debt many times before. Many people are way behind on their payments and nearly all of the loans are made by or guaranteed by the federal government. This Wall Street Journal article explains the current situation. Here's an excerpt that describes differences between student loan debt […]