Law Commons^™

Digital Market Manipulation, Ryan Calo

Articles

In 1999, Jon Hanson and Douglas Kysar coined the term “market manipulation” to describe how companies exploit the cognitive limitations of consumers. For example, everything costs $9.99 because consumers see the price as closer to $9 than $10. Although widely cited by academics, the concept of market manipulation has had only a modest impact on consumer protection law.

This Article demonstrates that the concept of market manipulation is descriptively and theoretically incomplete, and updates the framework of the theory to account for the realities of a marketplace that is mediated by technology. Today’s companies fastidiously study consumers and, increasingly, personalize …

Remittances From Puerto Rico: Unsuspected Transnational Locality In Times Of Crisis, Sheila I. Velez Martinez

Articles

This paper looks at immigrant remittances from Puerto Rico as a tool to understand how immigrant communities have faced and engaged the economic crisis. For example, from the data reviewed, it stems that immigrant remittances sent from Puerto Rico do not follow the same patterns as remittances sent from the United States and Europe inasmuch as they seem less affected by the global financial crisis and local unemployment rates. The research conducted also tends to indicate that money transfers from Puerto Rico might allow us to grasp the growing economic transnational relationships that are being maintained by varied immigrant communities …

The Impossible, Highly Desired Islamic Bank, Haider Ala Hamoudi

Articles

The purpose of this Article is to explore, and explain the stubborn persistence of, a central paradox that is endemic to the retail Islamic bank as it operates in the United States. The paradox is that retail Islamic banking in the United States is impossible, and yet it remains highly desired. It is impossible because the principles that are supposed to underlie the practice of Islamic finance deal with the trading of assets and the equitable sharing of risks, profits and losses among bank, depositor and portfolio investment. It is true that much of this can be, and is, circumvented …

At The Tipping Point: Race And Gender Discrimination In A Common Economic Transaction, Lu-In Wang

Articles

This Article examines the ubiquitous, multibillion dollar practice of tipping as a vehicle for race and gender discrimination by both customers and servers and as a case study of the role that organizations play in producing and promoting unequal treatment. The unique structure of tipped service encounters provides plenty of opportunities and incentives for the two parties to discriminate against one another. Neither customers nor servers are likely to find legal redress for the kinds of discrimination that are most likely to occur in tipped service transactions, however, because many of the same features of the transaction that promote discrimination …

Retaliation In An Eeo World,, Deborah L. Brake

Articles

This Article examines how the prevalence of internal policies and complaint procedures for addressing discrimination in the workplace are affecting legal protections from retaliation. Retaliation has been an unusually active field of law lately. The Supreme Court’s heightened interest in taking retaliation cases in recent years has highlighted the central importance of retaliation protections to the integrity of discrimination law. The Court’s string of plaintiff victories in retaliation cases has earned it the reputation as a pragmatic, pro-employee Court when it comes to retaliation law. However, this view does not account for the proliferation and influence of employer EEO policies …

Tortifying Retaliation: Protected Activity At The Intersection Of Fault, Duty, And Causation, Deborah L. Brake

Articles

In University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar, the Supreme Court broke its string of plaintiff victories in the eight retaliation cases it has decided since 2005. In its 2013 decision in that case, the Court rejected a mixed motive framework for Title VII’s retaliation provision, a part of the statute that Congress did not amend in 1991 when it adopted the motivating factor standard for proving discrimination under Title VII. For help construing what “because of” means in the retaliation claim, the Court looked to tort law, which it read as requiring plaintiffs to prove but-for causation …