Law Commons^™

Looking Beyond The Profit And Into The Light: Consumer Financial Protection And The Common Good, Veryl Victoria Miles

Scholarly Articles

The intention of this Article is to review the various statements of Catholic Social Teaching that are fundamental in describing economic justice and that are most pertinent to any consideration of consumer financial protection as essential to the common good. This review will begin with Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum and other encyclicals that followed Rerum Novarum as a continuum of Church teaching regarding social and economic justice; the pastoral letter from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops entitled Economic Justice for All (1986); and the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace's handbook on the Vocation of …

Peeling Back The Student Privacy Pledge, Alexi Pfeffer-Gillett

Scholarly Articles

Education software is a multi-billion dollar industry that is rapidly growing. The federal government has encouraged this growth through a series of initiatives that reward schools for tracking and aggregating student data. Amid this increasingly digitized education landscape, parents and educators have begun to raise concerns about the scope and security of student data collection.

Industry players, rather than policymakers, have so far led efforts to protect student data. Central to these efforts is the Student Privacy Pledge, a set of standards that providers of digital education services have voluntarily adopted. By many accounts, the Pledge has been a success. …

Mixed Reality: How The Laws Of Virtual Worlds Govern Everyday Life, Joshua A.T. Fairfield

Scholarly Articles

Just as the Internet linked human knowledge through the simple mechanism of the hyperlink, now reality itself is being hyperlinked, indexed, and augmented with virtual experiences. Imagine being able to check the background of your next date through your cell phone, or experience a hidden world of trolls and goblins while you are out strolling in the park. This is the exploding technology of Mixed Reality, which augments real places, people, and things with rich virtual experiences.

As virtual and real worlds converge, the law that governs virtual experiences will increasingly come to govern everyday life. The problem is that …

Consumer Protection In The Americas: A Second Wave Of American Revolutions?, Antonio F. Perez

Scholarly Articles

This article, which draws on the author's experience as a member of the Inter-American Juridical Committee of the Organization of American States, focuses on the problem of crafting an appropriate hemispheric regime for the protection of consumer rights. The subject is now a major element in the agenda of the OAS Specialized Conference on Private International Law (know also under its Spanish acronym as the CIDIP process), in part because of the increased salience of the issue in light of increasing e-commerce. The article, based on the author's presentation at a symposium at the St. Thomas School of Law in …

Consuming Debt: Structuring The Federal Response To Abuses In Consumer Credit, Heidi Mandanis Schooner

Scholarly Articles

Predatory lending is an avaricious fraud that demands attention. Several states have enacted new laws to combat predatory lending. Moreover, the battle against predatory lending and other abusive practices has focused attention on the overall structure of consumer credit laws. The current structure is dual; both state and federal governments play significant roles in combating credit fraud. The dual structure has been the source of controversy as federal regulators have claimed the power to preempt state law. This article furthers the structural debate and the effort to combat predatory lending by examining the architecture of consumer credit laws within the …

Tila ‘Finance’ And ‘Other’ Charges In Open-End Credit: The Cost-Of Credit Principle Applied To Charges For Optional Products Or Services, Ralph J. Rohner, Thomas Durkin

Scholarly Articles

The thesis of this article is that a more workable approach to characterizing fees for optional products and services is possible by focusing on charges that represent payment for discrete products or services of value to the consumer, freely chosen by consumers as contract options which do not affect the amount of credit available to the consumer, the consumer's access to it, or the allocation of payment responsibility and credit risk in the transaction or plan. In other words, these fees are for separate-or separable-purchases, analogous to subsequent events in closed-end credit that require no new disclosure or adjustment in …

Exporting Bank Credit Card Rates And Charges, Ralph J. Rohner

Scholarly Articles

Banks enjoy virtually unlimited authority to export interest rates, late fees, and over-limit charges across state lines. Open issues include the exportability of other fees, the viability of consumer common law claims such as unconscionability, and the effect of home-state choice-of-law.

Multiple Sources Of Consumer Law And Enforcement (Or: 'Still In Search Of A Uniform Policy'), Ralph J. Rohner

Scholarly Articles

In 1972 the National Commission on Consumer Finance surveyed and made recommendations for improving the legal and marketplace environments for consumer credit. Twenty years later, industry, consumer groups, government agencies, and the national and state legislatures are still groping for a coherent approach to the regulation of consumer credit. It is time for another national commission, or similar group, to make an objective and informed assessment of appropriately uniform policy for consumer financial services, and to craft a blueprint for future developments.

In Search Of A Uniform Policy: State And Federal Sources Of Consumer Financial Services Law, Ralph J. Rohner, Fred H. Miller

Scholarly Articles

Any effort to project the vectors of development in the law affecting consumer financial services for the 1980s must take into account the sources from which the legal ground rules will emanate. Those sources are in one sense bifurcated-i.e., the states have long had a significant role in regulating consumer credit and related consumer transactions, and, since 1968, the federal government has been substantially and increasingly involved in standard setting for consumer financial transactions.

At these two levels of government there is further fragmentation of the lawmaking function. Each of the fifty states, and countless local government entities, enact laws …

1981 Annual Survey Of Consumer Financial Services Law Developments, Ralph J. Rohner

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

1980 Annual Survey Of Consumer Financial Services Law Developments, Ralph J. Rohner

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Truth In Lending 'Simplified': Simplified?, Ralph J. Rohner

Scholarly Articles

Disclosure of credit terms has been viewed as a primary means of protecting consumers from fraud and deception in credit transactions. To enhance the value of disclosure, Congress enacted the Truth in Lending Simplification and Reform Act of 1980. Professor Rohner analyzes this attempt to simplifij crcdit cost disclosures and finds that the new Act is no more likely to increase consumer protection than the original Truth in Lending Act. The new Act does solve some problems, but does nothing about others and even introduccs further complexities into credit transactions. Among the difficulties left unaddressed by the new Act are …

The F.T.C. Amends The 'Holder' Rule, Ralph J. Rohner

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Problems Of Federalism In The Regulation Of Consumer Financial Services Offered By Commercial Banks: Part Ii, Ralph J. Rohner

Scholarly Articles

The first portion of this article reviewed the array of federal and state consumer protection laws affecting commercial banks and described the many areas of friction created by such multiple lawmaking. This half of the article addresses the question of how these various laws are enforced by the federal and state bank supervisory agencies and concludes with an evaluation of the many options for improving the overall regulatory and enforcement structure for consumer protection.

A Functional Analysis Of Truth In Lending, Ralph J. Rohner, Jonathan M. Landers

Scholarly Articles

The purpose of this Article is to take a hard look at the possible objectives of a disclosure statute such as Truth In Lending, and ask the basic question whether these objectives are attainable, and if so, what type of a statute can best effectuate the legislative policies. Given the lawmakers' fascination with disclosure-type legislation in the scheme for protecting consumers, and the myths that accompany such legislation, this undertaking should prove useful.

Problems Of Federalism In The Regulation Of Consumer Financial Services Offered By Commercial Banks, Part I, Ralph J. Rohner

Scholarly Articles

In this first half of a two-part article, the author reviews the complex structures through which federal and state consumerprotection laws are enacted and enforced with respect to commercial banks. Problems arisefrom the multiolicity of law-making bodies, the dual banking system, unclear preemption standards, and expandingfederal domination of the consumer creditfleld The secondpart of the article, which will appear in the next issue of this Review, analyzes the actual enforcement activities of the federal and state banking agencies. It concludes with a series of recommendationsfor improving the combined federal-state consumer protection programs affecting commercial banks.

For Lack Of A National Policy On Consumer Credit: Preliminary Thoughts On The Need For Unified Federal Agency Rulemaking, Ralph J. Rohner

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

New Directions In The Enforcement Of Consumer Credit Laws: From Public To Private And Back Again, Ralph J. Rohner

Scholarly Articles

The response of sympathetic lawmakers to perceived abuses in the consumer credit field is almost totally predictable. One group will urge the enactment of disclosure rules so that well-informed consumers will be able to look out for themselves in the marketplace. Another group will urge the passage of laws directly prohibiting the distasteful practice, or mandating a corrective mechanism. Both groups will then engage in endless rhetorical debate over the costs and benefits of either approach, the infringements on competition and marketplace freedom, and the burdens on small business.

All of these responses take for granted that the disappearance of …

Holder In Due Course In Consumer Transactions: Requiem, Revival, Or Reformation?, Ralph J. Rohner

Scholarly Articles

No area of consumer protection has produced as much near religious ferment in recent years as that collection of rules which insulate third party financers from product-related claims or defenses of consumer purchasers. Courts, legislatures, agencies, commissions, and commentators 6 have assailed the holder in due course idea from all directions, so far as its application in consumer transactions is concerned. The cloud of rhetoric thus raised has tended to obscure the complexity of the subject, state only imperfectly the significant considerations, and oversimplify the appropriate legal responses. Moreover, the focus of much of this recent discussion has been on …