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Consumer Law

CL&P Blog

The contributors to this blog are a diverse group of lawyers and law professors who practice, teach, or write about consumer law and policy. Although the blog is hosted by Public Citizen's Consumer Justice Project, the views expressed here are solely those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions with which they are affiliated.

Post Frequency: 15.1/day

Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 11:13:04

Paper Comparing US and European E-Commerce Protections

Posted on March 23, 2008
Michael L. Rustad of Suffolk has an article titled Circles of E-Consumer Trust: Old E-America v. New E-Europe in the Michigan State University College of Law Journal of International Law, available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1023659. Here's the abstract: Robert Kagan's article in...

Journal of Consumer Affairs Call for Papers on Privacy

Posted on March 22, 2008
The Journal of Consumer Affairs plans a special issue on Privacy Literacy -- How Consumers Understand and Protect Their Privacy. Here is the Call for Papers: Special Issue Guest Editors Jeff Langenderfer Anthony Miyazaki Meredith College Florida International University Consumers...

It's Time for Another National Commission on Consumer Finance

Posted on March 20, 2008
Back in 1968, Congress created a bipartisan National Commission on Consumer Finance. See Pub. L. No. 90-321. The Commission reported and went out of business. It's probably fair to say that the Consumer Credit Protection Act would be a very...

Costs and Benefits of Subprime Lending

Posted on March 20, 2008
By Alan White The new paper by Todd Zywicki and Joseph Adamson reasserts the received wisdom that subprime mortgage lending had significant consumer welfare benefits, specifically that it increased homeownership and provided access to credit to previously excluded groups...

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Huge Upswing in Credit Card Borrowing

Posted on March 19, 2008
New fed numbers are out showing Americans sucked down 6.9 billion dollars in new credit card debt, increasing outstanding consumer credit to $2.52 trillion during the month of January. This increase was double the $3.7 billion increase in the previous...

The Law and Economics of Subprime Lending

Posted on March 19, 2008
Todd Zywicki and Joseph Adamson of George Mason have a new article at SSRN offering a conservative law-and-economics take on the subprime mortgage lending crisis. After a lot of back and forth, the paper's basic point is that policymakers shouldn't...

Alan Greenspan's The Age of Turbulence

Posted on March 19, 2008
In my post of yesterday, drawn from the Pittsbugh Post-Gazette essay, I mentioned how Alan Greenspan's book, The Age of Turbulence, doesn't address predatory lending. In fact, readers searching for references to the many consumer law statutes the Fed interprets...

We Need a Single Agency to Regulate Consumer Credit Transactions

Posted on March 18, 2008
Today's edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has an essay I wrote which they gave the headline "The Private Sector: U.S. Needs Agency to Watch Consumer Credit." It appears below. In the version below, I reinserted, in brackets, a sentence that...

Bushvilles springing up

Posted on March 18, 2008
The Consumerist today features a BBC video making the rounds of the blogosphere. The video reports on tent cities springing up in Southern California, occupied by former homeowners, victims of the foreclosure crisis. Another video report on the phenomenon is...

From the Consumerist: "Credit Card Victims Muzzled"

Posted on March 17, 2008
On Friday, Alan White posted here about Congress's unusual demand that four consumers waive their rights to privacy in their financial histories before being allowed to testify before the House Financial Services Committee on the abusive credit card practices that...

Supercapitalism

Posted on March 17, 2008
I recently finished Robert B. Reich's fascinating book Supercapitalism. Reich, who served in the Clinton cabinet, pulls together a number of themes into a coherent, and depressing, whole. He argues that the marketplace is far more competitive than it once...

Due Diligence Disregarded

Posted on March 17, 2008
Scott Reckard of the LA Times just wrote an excellent investigative report on due diligence, or the absence of it, in the securitization of subprime mortgages. He interviewed former employees of Clayton Holdings and Bohan Group, companies hired by securities...

What Happened to the Arbitration Clauses in the Subprime Litigation?

Posted on March 16, 2008
Last week, Alan blogged here about the Navigant Consulting Report on suits by consumers, among others, against subprime lenders. The Times covered the report today in an article here. I'm wondering how borrowers have been able to file these suits....

Shmuel Becher Papers on Consumer Contracts

Posted on March 15, 2008
Shmuel I. Becher has two papers on consumer contracts. One is Behavioral Science and Consumer Standard Form Contracts, 68 Louisiana Law Review, available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1016002. Here's the abstract: Asymmetric information is a serious threat to the market of consumer standard...

Richard "Dickie" Scruggs Pleads Guilty To Federal Crime

Posted on March 14, 2008
Well-known Mississippi plaintiffs' lawyer Richard "Dickie" Scruggs has pleaded guilty to a federal crime arising from a November 2007 indictment alleging that Scruggs bribed a state court judge. The Jackson, Mississippi Clarion-Ledger reports on the story here...

Frank proposes FHA short refi bill

Posted on March 14, 2008
Congressman Barney Frank, Chair of the House Financial Services Committee, has announced a mortgage rescue plan: a bill to permit FHA to insure refinance mortgages. The discussion draft is available here. FHA would insure new mortgages for up to 90%....

New HUD Mortgage Disclosure Rule Out

Posted on March 14, 2008
HUD published its long-awaited RESPA mortgage disclosure rule in today's Federal Register. The proposed rule includes new model forms to be provided to consumers buying or refinancing a home. This proposal, in the works for years, aims to provide mortgage...

Times Articles on Subprime Crisis, Debt Collection, the CPSC Bills, Reverse Mortgages, and Online Privacy

Posted on March 14, 2008
I've accumulated a huge backlog of recent Times articles on consumer law issues, so here goes an attempt to reduce the backlog. Many of the articles involve the mortgage crisis and plans to do something about it. For example, the...

Congress abuses consumers' privacy

Posted on March 14, 2008
Many CL&P readers no doubt read Credit Slips regularly, but those who don't should read this post by Professor Warren. At a House Subcommittee hearing on credit card abuses and the credit card holder's bill of rights legislation, four consumers...

Wright Paper on Behavioral Law and Economics and Consumer Contracts

Posted on March 13, 2008
Joshua D. Wright of George Mason has an article in 2 NYU Journal of Law & Liberty, Behavioral Law and Economics, Paternalism, and Consumer Contracts: An Empirical Perspective, available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1015899. Here's the abstract: Modern legal scholars frequently and increasingly...

Matt Edwards Paper on the FTC's Use of Behavioral Law and Economics

Posted on March 12, 2008
Matt Edwards's article, The FTC and the New Paternalism, can be found at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1014652. Here's the abstract During the past decade, we have witnessed a renaissance of paternalism in legal scholarship fueled by the rise of behavioral law and economics...

Intellectual Property Bullies -- This Time It Is the Grinch

Posted on March 12, 2008
Dr. Seuss ?- or, at least, the lawyers for his estate -- are at it again. The victim this time is Teamsters for a Democratic Union, which put articles on its web site and in its newspaper that portrayed Teamster...

Subprime: the Lawsuits

Posted on March 11, 2008
By Alan White Borrower class actions comprised 43% of subprime mortgage litigation filed in federal courts in 2007 according to a new report from Navigant Consulting, based on a survey of 278 cases. Other categories included securities investor claims (22%),...

Angela Littwin Paper on How Low-Income Borrowers Respond to Restraints on Credit Card Use

Posted on March 10, 2008
Angela K. Littwin of Harvard has written a paper, Testing the Substitution Hypothesis: Would Credit Card Regulation Force Low-Income Borrowers Into Less Desirable Lending Alternatives?, available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1014460. Here's the abstract: One of the strongest arguments against regulating credit cards...

Engel & McCoy Paper on Improving Sustainability of Minority Homeownership

Posted on March 09, 2008
Two leading writers on predatory lending, Kathleen C. Engel and Patricia McCoy have written a paper titled From Credit Denial to Predatory Lending: The Challenge of Sustaining Minority Homeownership, available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1011489 Here's the abstract: Years of discriminatory behavior against...

David Adam Friedman Article on Free Offers

Posted on March 07, 2008
David Adam Friedman's article, Free Offers: A New Look, to appear in the New Mexico Law Review, is available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1010238. Here's the abstract: Free offers - the practice wherein firms market goods and services by claiming that they are...

Senate Passes Consumer Product Safety Bill

Posted on March 07, 2008
This Washington Post article reports that S. 2663, The CPSC Reform Act, was passed by the U.S. Senate by an overwhelming 79 to 13 margin. The beginning of the Post article provides a synopsis: The Senate yesterday approved the most...

Fed Credit Card Rule update

Posted on March 05, 2008
At today's Consumer Advisory Council meeting, Federal Reserve Board staff provided a bit more information on the news that the Fed will regulate abusive credit card practices. A proposed rulemaking will be published in the Federal Register, perhaps in April...

Mortgage standards improving?

Posted on March 05, 2008
Has the mortgage market self-corrected by tightening up underwriting? Not according to blownmortgage.com. In this post, the author describes lender junk mail aimed at brokers, touting aggressive undewriting, no-doc loans and other questionable practices.

Consumer Product Safety Commission Legislation Moves Toward Senate Vote

Posted on March 05, 2008
Over at U.S. PIRG's consumer blog, there's a running description of the progress of a consumer product safety bill pending before the Senate. That bill -- S. 2663, the CPSC Reform Act -- would, among many other things, provide more...

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