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Full-Text Articles in Consumer Protection Law

Esg-Based Litigation: A Solution To Social Media Companies’ Immunization From Liability For Human Trafficking On Their Platforms, Grace Dore May 2026

Esg-Based Litigation: A Solution To Social Media Companies’ Immunization From Liability For Human Trafficking On Their Platforms, Grace Dore

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Social media platforms have transformed communication, but they have also become a critical tool for human traffickers, who use them to recruit victims, maintain control, and facilitate illegal activities. Despite this, social media companies have largely avoided legal accountability due to the broad immunity provided by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (“CDA”), which courts have interpreted to shield platforms from lawsuits arising from user activity. Congress has sought to address this gap through legislation such as the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (“TVPA”) and the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (“FOSTA”). However, these efforts …


Balancing A Circular Economy With Brand Protection: How Luxury Fashion Houses Can Regulate Upcycling Through Trademark Licensing, Olivia Dinkins Dec 2025

Balancing A Circular Economy With Brand Protection: How Luxury Fashion Houses Can Regulate Upcycling Through Trademark Licensing, Olivia Dinkins

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

The growing demand for sustainable fashion, particularly among younger consumers, has led to a surge in upcycling practices that repurpose pre-existing materials, often featuring luxury brand trademarks. While upcycling may support a circular economy and artistic innovation, it poses complex legal challenges for trademark owners, especially concerning consumer confusion, dilution, and the use of counterfeit materials. This Note explores the intersection of trademark law and sustainability in the luxury fashion sector, highlighting the tension between environmental responsibility and intellectual property protection. This Note first analyzes the way various courts have confronted these issues and the limitations of doctrines like first …


Missing Strugglers: Debt’S Reach, Bankruptcy’S Limits, And A Proxy For Who’S Left Out, Dalié Jiménez Dec 2025

Missing Strugglers: Debt’S Reach, Bankruptcy’S Limits, And A Proxy For Who’S Left Out, Dalié Jiménez

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

This essay uses Debt’s Grip as a point of departure to examine how debt operates as a system of social control in the United States. While the book offers a vivid portrait of those who file for bankruptcy, it also gestures toward a broader reality: millions of financially distressed individuals who never access relief. Drawing on legal scholarship and political theory, this Essay argues that debt disciplines individuals, fragments solidarity, and undermines democratic agency. It proposes a new metric—the ratio of debt collection lawsuits to bankruptcy filings—as a proxy for unmet need, revealing a population of “missing strugglers” visible to …


Myth Busters: A Review Of “Debt’S Grip”, Susan Block-Lieb Dec 2025

Myth Busters: A Review Of “Debt’S Grip”, Susan Block-Lieb

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Debt’s Grip follows a long line of literature that looks to combat legal and cultural myths about consumer debt and consumer bankruptcy with quantitative and qualitative analysis on these topics. Who files for bankruptcy and why? Fighting longstanding myths is tough work, but Pamela Foohey, Robert M. Lawless and Deborah Thorne have marshalled a strong set of tools, and strong intellectual allies, to support this epic battle.


How And Why To Be A Strategic Debtor, Chrystin Ondersma Dec 2025

How And Why To Be A Strategic Debtor, Chrystin Ondersma

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Shame and fear prevent many Americans who need debt relief from seeking it. Americans who struggle with debt should reject fear and shame and should instead feel empowered and entitled to seek relief in bankruptcy. Almost every American will need to take on debt at some point. We’re expected to use credit to acquire educations, homes, cars, and appliances—even medical care. Americans do not incur debt strategically, but rather as a matter of survival. In Dignity Not Debt, I argued that human dignity, not profits, should guide policymakers, and that our collective goal should be to end both survival debt …


Can The New Literature About Debt Make A Real Difference In The Real World?, Norman I. Silber Dec 2025

Can The New Literature About Debt Make A Real Difference In The Real World?, Norman I. Silber

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Thank you for inviting me to participate in this symposium organized around a group of new books about “Debt in the Real World.” My discussion in Part I considers from a historical perspective the place these books occupy as part of a long tradition of consumer reform which has combined popular literature with scholarship to promote change. Part II then explores themes common to this new wave. Part III closes by arguing that as in earlier periods the new wave can make headway notwithstanding attacks on governmental interventions; that there may be space in our political geography for some of …


Power, Tools, And Process: Some Reflections On Bankruptcy Minimalism, Edward J. Janger Dec 2025

Power, Tools, And Process: Some Reflections On Bankruptcy Minimalism, Edward J. Janger

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

In Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal, Melissa Jacoby offers a brilliant and sweeping indictment of the way in which bankruptcy law is currently practiced in the United States. As she puts it, “This book is a story of falling out of love. With a law.” Like me, Professor Jacoby came of professional age, at the close of the first age of the Bankruptcy Code. Enacted in 1978, we both learned the statute in the mid-1990s, at a time when the transformative power of the 1978 Code was reaching its peak. On the business side, corporations …


Oh, Oh, No Ozempic: The Dangers Of Ozempic’S Direct-To-Consumer Advertisements, Taylor Blicht Dec 2025

Oh, Oh, No Ozempic: The Dangers Of Ozempic’S Direct-To-Consumer Advertisements, Taylor Blicht

Journal of Law and Policy

On average, viewers are exposed to about nine drug advertisements a day. Direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising (“DTCPA”) is when pharmaceutical companies market their prescription drugs straight to consumers. Ozempic is a weekly injection of semaglutide, developed by the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk in 2017 for adults with Type-2 diabetes. After people started to show signs of weight loss on Ozempic, Novo Nordisk created Wegovy in June 2021, targeting towards people with obesity. Due to the exploding weight-loss effect of Wegovy, celebrities and social media influencers started taking the medication and sharing their weight loss journeys. DTCPA can be harmful to consumers …


Barbarians At The Gate Or Angels At The Crossroads? Examining The Impact Of The Uk Green Taxonomy On Private Equity Firms, Melek Redzheb, Fatjon Kaja Sep 2025

Barbarians At The Gate Or Angels At The Crossroads? Examining The Impact Of The Uk Green Taxonomy On Private Equity Firms, Melek Redzheb, Fatjon Kaja

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

This Article explores whether the UK Green Taxonomy will foster sustainable corporate governance in private equity-backed portfolio companies. We explore how the Taxonomy will address the greenwashing problem that plagues financial markets, including the private equity industry. Our analysis suggests that general partners will have a twofold response to the new reforms. In the short term, they will seek to address the social concerns of limited partners by negatively screening unsustainable companies and cherry-picking more sustainable ones (the so-called “exit” strategy). In the long term, however, they will adopt a dynamic strategy to transform unsustainable targets into sustainable enterprises on …


Show Me The Money: Approaches To Anti-Money Laundering Compliance For Digital Assets, Mollie Rouan Sep 2025

Show Me The Money: Approaches To Anti-Money Laundering Compliance For Digital Assets, Mollie Rouan

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

The European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (“MiCA”) created a harmonized framework to regulate digital asset issuance and services that were not already covered by existing regulations. Notably, MiCA requires virtual asset providers to adhere to the Financial Action Task Force Recommendation 16 (“FATF”), also known as the Travel Rule. Though the Travel Rule has existed for almost 20 years, its application to crypto asset transfers is entirely new. The purpose of the Travel Rule is to detect and prevent money laundering and terrorist financing, but its application to cryptocurrency wallet transactions is criticized for being overly burdensome and invasive …


Blueprints For The Gilded Age Of Borrowing: Theorizing Mutually Beneficial Policies For The Golden Age Of Private Credit, Sam Friedman May 2025

Blueprints For The Gilded Age Of Borrowing: Theorizing Mutually Beneficial Policies For The Golden Age Of Private Credit, Sam Friedman

Brooklyn Law Review

Through financial ingenuity, lending practices often generate an indirect yet significant impact on the average person’s finances. Relatedly, the 2007–2008 Financial Crisis revealed the profound and far-reaching consequences attributable to risky lending. Congress sought to curb lenders’ risk appetite by passing the Dodd-Frank Act, legislation which commissioned new, industry-specific oversight bodies. However, this legislative antidote had a side effect: it engendered a new class of borrowers—those precluded, based on a variety of risk diagnostics, from obtaining capital from the most popular lenders. But when the conventional borrowing doors closed, private lending markets opened in earnest. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, growth …


The Fall From Standing: How The Courts Have Diverged From Financial Standing Standards, Shouatshen Adoree Yang Apr 2025

The Fall From Standing: How The Courts Have Diverged From Financial Standing Standards, Shouatshen Adoree Yang

Brooklyn Law Review

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) enable consumers to sue credit reporting and debt collection agencies for engaging in abusive practices such as reporting false information or continuous harassment. In order for a lawsuit to be heard, consumers must have constitutional standing, and thus, must have suffered a particularized and concrete injury. However, it may be difficult for consumers to allege a concrete injury given that credit and debt issues often result in harm that is intangible and difficult to categorize. While the Supreme Court has classified financial, intangible injuries as concrete …


The Extraordinary Extension Of The Video Privacy Protection Act: Why The “Ordinary Course Of Business” Of An Analog Era Is Anything But Ordinary In The Digital World, Elizabeth Gemdjian Feb 2025

The Extraordinary Extension Of The Video Privacy Protection Act: Why The “Ordinary Course Of Business” Of An Analog Era Is Anything But Ordinary In The Digital World, Elizabeth Gemdjian

Brooklyn Law Review

In the last dozen years, a wide range of companies—from streaming platforms to consumer goods brands to nonprofits—have been the target of lawsuits under an idiosyncratic, outdated law: the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988 (VPPA). The VPPA focuses only on consumers’ privacy related to video content; it prohibits a party that has data on a consumer’s video viewing history, along with personally identifiable information about that consumer, from disclosing that information without the consumer’s consent. While the VPPA did not get much attention in court until recently, in the past decade, the volume of VPPA-related claims has exploded. This …


A Call For Statutory Reform: Online Marketplaces That Profit From Product Sales Should Be Held Strictly Liable As Sellers, Mark Anderson Dec 2024

A Call For Statutory Reform: Online Marketplaces That Profit From Product Sales Should Be Held Strictly Liable As Sellers, Mark Anderson

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Today, Americans purchase roughly 16% of all consumer goods through online marketplaces such as Amazon. While traditional brick-and-mortar retailers that sell defective products are strictly liable for harm caused by those products, online marketplace retailers, which serve analogous roles in defective product sales, can often evade liability entirely. Amazon, for instance, is immune from liability for product defects in more than 60% of sales conducted on its website in almost every state. This Note explains why online marketplaces that profit from defective product sales should be strictly liable for harm those products cause, and why courts often refuse to hold …


Nil: How Third-Party Businesses Exploit Collegiate Student-Athletes With Impunity, Matthew Glogower Dec 2024

Nil: How Third-Party Businesses Exploit Collegiate Student-Athletes With Impunity, Matthew Glogower

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

While there are numerous state NIL (name, image, and likeness) laws protecting student-athletes from economic exploitation, there is no federal law which offers universal protection, nationwide, to student-athletes. State NIL laws offer some protections for student-athletes from exploitation by colleges, universities, and boosters, but there is no protection for student-athletes who sign NIL deals with for-profit third-party businesses. These NIL deals, between the student-athlete and third-party businesses, make up the majority of NIL agreements. Section 6 of the proposed College Athlete Economic Freedom Act (“CAEFA”), titled “Enforcement Provisions,” aims to codify federal protection for student-athletes against colleges, universities, and boosters, …


I Ain't Afraid Of No Ghost…Kitchen! A New Realm Of Consumer Protection After The Inform Consumers Act, Johanna Silva Dec 2024

I Ain't Afraid Of No Ghost…Kitchen! A New Realm Of Consumer Protection After The Inform Consumers Act, Johanna Silva

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic were pervasive, sparing none from its impact. However, the restaurant industry bore an even greater change and a heavier burden than most. At the height of the pandemic, some 110,000 restaurants shut down. QR codes replaced paper menus, street parking transformed into outdoor dining sheds, and Friday night dinners at the “great spot on the corner” became takeout orders from the couch. Reopening was an unpredictable gamble for restaurant owners, fraught with tiered plans and inconsistent regulations on safe and unsafe dining practices. The desperate search for creative solutions to stay in business propelled …


Summary Eviction Proceedings As A Debt Collection Tool: How Landlords Use Serial Eviction Filings To Collect Rent, Grace Vetromile May 2024

Summary Eviction Proceedings As A Debt Collection Tool: How Landlords Use Serial Eviction Filings To Collect Rent, Grace Vetromile

Brooklyn Law Review

This note explores how landlords use housing court as a debt collection tool, impacting the rights of tenants and their ability to fairly adjudicate claims in summary eviction proceedings. Disparities in the number of evictions that are filed, as compared to evictions that are ultimately executed, indicate that landlords do not always use eviction proceedings to kick out a tenant, but rather as a method of debt collection. Using these proceedings in this manner affects a tenant’s ability to defend against eviction, even when the tenant has meritorious claims that their landlord did not provide a habitable apartment. This note …


Impact Ipsa Loquitur: A Reverse Hand Rule For Consumer Finance, Edward Janger, Susan Block-Lieb Apr 2024

Impact Ipsa Loquitur: A Reverse Hand Rule For Consumer Finance, Edward Janger, Susan Block-Lieb

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Emerging Technologies And Perfection Of Security Interests: A Financial University Of Uncertainty, Elizabeth M. Wagenbach Mar 2024

Emerging Technologies And Perfection Of Security Interests: A Financial University Of Uncertainty, Elizabeth M. Wagenbach

Brooklyn Law Review

Since the founding of Bitcoin in 2009, digital assets, such as cryptocurrency, have exploded in popularity. Cryptocurrency has been associated with stories of immense profit and immense loss. The lucky transactors have been able to capitalize on the price fluctuations of cryptocurrency, while the unlucky transactors became victims of the same volatility, losing tremendous amounts of money. The novelty and ingenuity of cryptocurrency has been coupled with mass confusion to transactors and regulators alike. These early days of cryptocurrency have been characterized by a sort of regulatory tug of war that is a direct result of confusion of what cryptocurrency …


It's Finally Time For A National Data Privacy Law: A Discussion Of The American Data Privacy And Protection Act (Adppa), Erin J. An Dec 2023

It's Finally Time For A National Data Privacy Law: A Discussion Of The American Data Privacy And Protection Act (Adppa), Erin J. An

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Millions of Americans face unprecedented privacy risks related to their data, often without their awareness. With the increasing value of consumer data and its growing utilization by businesses, there is a growing demand for greater transparency and privacy protections. As of 2023, no comprehensive federal law governs data privacy in the United States, leaving citizens with limited protections. Introduced to Congress on June 21, 2022, the American Data and Privacy Protection Act (ADPPA) successfully passed the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, making it the furthest a national comprehensive data privacy bill has progressed through the federal legislative …


Kneecapping Scalping: Ending The Predatory Scourge Plaguing E-Commerce Using Unfair Practice Frameworks, Zachary Michael Elvove Dec 2023

Kneecapping Scalping: Ending The Predatory Scourge Plaguing E-Commerce Using Unfair Practice Frameworks, Zachary Michael Elvove

Brooklyn Law Review

Concert goers and sports fans are no longer the only people forced to pay absurdly marked up prices. From baby formula to video game consoles, scalping dominates the sale of goods online. Yet existing frameworks for antiscalping—specifically their relentless focus on tickets, bots, and hidden fees—fundamentally fail to address the parasitic profiteering that underpins scalping in the modern economy. We cannot understand the scope of harms posed by pernicious online resale if we focus purely on the minutiae of ticket markets and technological exploitation—the sheer number of industries affected by scalping and size of the market failure it causes demand …


Banking-As-A-Service: Fintechs Walking The Regulatory Perimeter, Braeden Hodges May 2023

Banking-As-A-Service: Fintechs Walking The Regulatory Perimeter, Braeden Hodges

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Financial technology (fintech) has ushered into today’s financial markets a wave of innovations that have revolutionized the way financial services are rendered and consumed. One such transformation is Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS): a partnership model through which nonbank businesses offer federally regulated banking products directly to consumers. By disintermediating the banking value chain, BaaS is democratizing access to financial services and lowering barriers to entry for many unbanked and underbanked individuals. These initiatives bring with them a number of concerns—such as data privacy risks, new forms of surveillance and discrimination, and economic instability—that are augmented by a systemic deficiency in regulators’ ability …


The Case Against The Debt Tax, Vijay Raghavan Apr 2023

The Case Against The Debt Tax, Vijay Raghavan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Shifting Burdens At The Fringe, Vijay Raghavan May 2022

Shifting Burdens At The Fringe, Vijay Raghavan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Consumer Law's Equity Gap, Vijay Raghavan Jan 2022

Consumer Law's Equity Gap, Vijay Raghavan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Fit For Its Ordinary Purpose: Implied Warranties And Common Law Duties For Consumer Finance Contracts, Edward J. Janger, Susan Block-Lieb Jan 2022

Fit For Its Ordinary Purpose: Implied Warranties And Common Law Duties For Consumer Finance Contracts, Edward J. Janger, Susan Block-Lieb

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Putting A Finger On Biometric Privacy Laws: How Congress Can Stitch Together The Patchwork Of Biometric Privacy Laws In The United States, Eliza Simons Dec 2021

Putting A Finger On Biometric Privacy Laws: How Congress Can Stitch Together The Patchwork Of Biometric Privacy Laws In The United States, Eliza Simons

Brooklyn Law Review

The use of biometric identification in the consumer industry has grown immensely over the last decade and is projected to continue growing at an even faster rate. As private entities abandon password-based security systems and opt for the more secure, convenient, and cost-effective method of using biometric data, individuals are worried how that information will be protected. Although the right to privacy has always been valued in the United States, Congress has yet to specifically address biometric privacy. This note sets the legal landscape of privacy law, through the lens of biometric privacy, by surveying four categories of privacy law: …


The Patient Assistance Problem, Daniel O’Brien Lichtenauer Dec 2021

The Patient Assistance Problem, Daniel O’Brien Lichtenauer

Journal of Law and Policy

Implemented in January 2006 as a voluntary enrollment supplement to standard Medicare plans, Medicare Part D coverage subsidizes the cost of prescription drugs for participants. However, significant gaps in coverage exist for those suffering from rare diseases that require costly drugs. Pharmaceutical companies seek to remove the powerful market force of patient price sensitivity by directly sponsoring or substantially funding “patient assistance programs” that help cover out-of-pocket costs. While pharmaceutical donors insist that their goal is strictly altruistic, the reality is that many of these programs offer a financial windfall for drug makers because they help funnel patients towards new …


From The Golden Gate To London: Bridging The Gap Between Data Privacy And The Right Of Publicity, Kristin Kuraishi Dec 2021

From The Golden Gate To London: Bridging The Gap Between Data Privacy And The Right Of Publicity, Kristin Kuraishi

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Currently, there is no global standard or recognition for the right of publicity. Even within the United States, the recognition, scope, and protections vary by state. As the world becomes increasingly reliant on social media for news, information, communication, and recommendations, micro-influencers and non-celebrities require a way to control their developed and curated name, image, and likeness from unauthorized commercial uses by others. Advertising is occurring more frequently online, and brands recognize the power that micro-influencers have on commerce. Some countries, like the United Kingdom, do not recognize the right of publicity, potentially leaving many individuals without recourse for the …


Prosecuting The Phone Scammer When Extradition Fails And Concurrent Jurisdiction Exists, Michelle Lepkofker Dec 2021

Prosecuting The Phone Scammer When Extradition Fails And Concurrent Jurisdiction Exists, Michelle Lepkofker

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Advancements in technology allow people to place phone calls half a world away via the internet. This technology has made it easier and cheaper for consumers to communicate, but it has also made it easier for scammers to reach more unsuspecting victims. In 2020, TrueCaller, an app designed to block scam phone calls, successfully blocked, and identified 31.3 billion spam calls in 20 countries. In the same year, Americans alone lost a total of USD $ 29.8 billion to scam calls. This Note argues that phone scams continue to be lucrative, in part, because criminal prosecutions of transnational crimes are …