Consumer Protection Law Commons^™

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

Defining Deference: Impacts Of Abandoning Chevron On Emerging Technology Governance And Administrative Law, R. Aubrey Davis Iii

Seattle University Law Review

Emerging technologies, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI), often lead to unforeseen legal outcomes. Notable abuses in areas such as facial recognition, employment bias, and housing discrimination are well known. However, legislative responses to these issues either have been largely reactive or there has been no legislative response at all. In lieu of legislation, agencies have sought to fill the gap. For example, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently proposed a rule mandating voter notification for all AI-generated political phone calls citing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) of 1991 as authority. However, the TCPA was originally passed to curtail telemarketing, not …

Intellectual Property Or Modern Folklore? The Problem With Open Gaming Licenses In Tabletop Gaming, Rosie Midget

Seattle University Law Review

This Note addresses how courts and legislatures should address “Open Gaming Licenses” commonly attached to tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), which game publishers use to promote a false image of accessibility—misleading consumers and building goodwill from the misunderstanding. Part I discusses what TTRPGs are, including the defining features of the hobby and culture surrounding it, as well as the unique interplay between publishers and players. Part II explores the question of which elements in a TTRPG system may be subject to copyright protection. Part III examines these elements in practice using Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons and Dragons TTRPG as a …

Modern Day Colonialism Through HawaiʻI’S Quiet Title And Partition Laws, Cheyann Fujii

Seattle University Law Review

This Note will attempt to highlight important aspects of Hawaiian history to provide readers with a clear picture on how Native Hawaiians are still impacted by colonialism, specifically when plaintiffs bring a quiet title or partition action against Native Hawaiian owners of kuleana lands. Before colonization, the concept of private land ownership did not exist in Hawai‘i, and Native Hawaiians adopted a feudal system by dividing land into geographical areas. Missionaries and businessmen brought Western ideas to Hawai‘i and influenced legislation such as the Great Māhele and the Kuleana Land Act of 1850, which solidified the concept of private property. …

Data Advantage And Merger Review: Can Entrenchment Theory Reform Antitrust Enforcement?, Shin-Ru Cheng

Seattle University Law Review

A merger involving giant digital companies is likely to dampen competition, as it allows those companies to combine and control data access, enabling them to entrench their dominant positions in relevant markets and extend those positions into related markets. While competition law in many jurisdictions aims to prohibit mergers that may substantially lessen competition or create a monopoly, arguably the review of digital mergers is failing because antitrust agencies lack an effective approach to identify data-generated anticompetitive harms. This Article demonstrates that entrenchment theory, recently reintroduced in the 2023 U.S. Merger Guidelines, would help reform the process of antitrust enforcement. …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Caution: Potholes In E-Scooter Data Collection, Dakota Rakestraw

Seattle University Law Review

Lime scooters keep ending up in major waterways in Washington state metro areas, a testament to the ubiquity of e-scooters in the metropolitan landscape. How they get there is unclear. Why they get there is even murkier. Perhaps the answer lies in the implications of modern geolocation data collection through e-scooters and gaps in current data collection regulation curbing individual liberties.

Since September 2020, electric scooters have run Seattle’s streets and have dramatically overtaken ridesharing bike trips. For example, from September 2020 to September 2021, there were about 1.4 million scooter and bike trips with September 2021 seeing 300,000 scooter …

Machinists Preemption In The New Administrative Law, Andrew J. Ziaja

Seattle University Law Review

This Article assesses Machinists preemption—a labor-specific form of implied field preemption—while freshly considering implications both for and of new developments in administrative law. The radical transformation of administrative law in the Supreme Court, particularly its newfound emphasis on clear-statement rules, provides opportunities to reconsider the Machinists rationale. Aligning with scholars who have called to question the doctrine’s “ossifying” influence on labor and employment policy, it argues that the modern-day version of Machinists preemption clashes with the Supreme Court’s newly constrained view of delegated power and its differing conceptions of the major questions doctrine.

On the other hand, Machinists preemption might …

Slum Managers, Anika Singh Lemar

Connecticut Law Review

All sorts of landlords—governmental landlords, cooperatives, large-scale corporate landlords, and mom-and-pops—engage in slumlording to some degree. Despite that fact, some of the most popular proposed solutions to the problem focus on a property owner’s size and corporate form, rather than its property management practices. This Essay contends that management, not ownership, is the proper target for regulations intended to improve the conditions under which many tenants live. It then proposes pairing and using in tandem two mechanisms for addressing management: licensing and receivership.

Competition: Legal Landscape For Agri-Food Data, Anthony D. Rosborough

Reports & Public Policy Documents

This guidebook provides an overview of legal principles associated with competition law and dives deeper into a case study looking at the right to repair (R2R). Although the right to repair is a multifaceted issue, it can serve as a way to understand the application of competition law to digital agriculture technology. The first section of the guidebook provides an overview of the rationale and scope of Canadian competition law. This is followed by an exploration of the relationship between digital agricultural technology, farm data and competition. Finally, before looking at the right to repair, we will study a selection …

The Sec, Fraud, And Cryptocurrencies, Lawrence J. Trautman, Brian Elzweig, Neal F. Newman

Faculty Scholarship

The SEC’s Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2022–2026 is focused on the impact of the rapidly developing rate of change in new technologies that provide for markets to be more interconnected and interdependent than ever. Because Congress has yet to give the SEC, or any other agency, express authority to regulate cryptocurrency, the SEC has taken a regulation-by-enforcement approach. The SEC’s recent enforcement efforts relating to crypto asset securities were substantial, with enforcement actions addressing a range of alleged misconduct in the crypto asset securities space, including billion- dollar crypto fraud schemes; unregistered crypto asset offerings, platforms, and intermediaries; and …

Eviction Sealing: A Lifeline In The Fight For Housing Justice, Allison Freedman

Faculty Scholarship

In January 2023, the White House released a Blueprint for a Renters Bill of Rights. The Blueprint called for immediate sealing of eviction case filings to reduce the likelihood that tenants would be locked out of future housing opportunities without the chance to defend themselves. Shortly thereafter, the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a request for public comment on how the use of eviction records and screening algorithms may affect tenant housing opportunities and drive discriminatory outcomes. The eviction crisis, its discriminatory effects, and the idea that sealing eviction records may provide a solution to …

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 …

Improvident Credit Extension: A New Legal Concept Aborning?, Vern Countryman

Maine Law Review

The latest triumph of our modified free enterprise system is consumer credit which, including home mortgages, has burgeoned from $30 billion since the end of 1945 to more than $569 billion in March 1974. In 1946 the total cost to consumers for interest and debt retirement was $10 billion, or six percent of family income. By 1966 it was $110.6 billion, or twenty-two percent of family income. By 1971 installment debt charges accounted for from twenty to thirty-nine percent of disposable income for five percent of our families and for forty percent or more of disposable income for another two …

Changes In The Present Maine Law Created By The Maine State Consumer Credit Code, John A. Spanogle Jr.

Maine Law Review

The Maine Consumer Credit Code [M3C] was enacted by the Special Session of the 106th Legislature of the State of Maine, and will become effective on January 1, 1975. It will regulate almost all consumer credit transactions not secured by first mortgages on real estate. The statute also creates a new, self-financed Bureau of Consumer Protection under the Department of Business Regulation. This article will first discuss the legislative history of the M3C. Second, it will discuss the scope and jurisdiction of the M3C in comparison with the total scope of all the prior statutes. Third, the article will discuss …

Against Monetary Primacy, Yair Listokin, Rory Van Loo

Faculty Scholarship

To reduce inflation, the Federal Reserve (Fed) raises interest rates. But every month with high interest rates increases the risk of a devastating recession. Recessions impose not only short-term pain in the form of widespread unemployment but also lifelong harm for many, as vulnerable workers and those who start their careers during a downturn never fully recover. Yet hiking interest rates is the centerpiece of U.S. inflation-fighting policy. When inflation is high, the Fed raises interest rates until inflation is tamed, regardless of the consequent sacrifices. We call this inflation-fighting paradigm “monetary primacy.” Despite its great risks, monetary primacy has …

Government-Backed Insurance For Artificial Intelligence Technologies, Renee Henson

Faculty Publications

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an unpredictable technology that has the capacity to both help and harm people. Although insurance plays a key role in compensating for harms in other contexts, AI-produced damages evade traditional principles of risk pricing which limits viable commercial insurance coverage. AI requires modified insurance systems that can compensate diverse and unpredictable losses. Just like AI, at one time nuclear energy was viewed as a new and profitable, yet wholly unpredictable, technology that had the capacity to cause devastating harm. AI poses similar threats to society in certain domains, including, for example, health care (e.g., risk management …

Judicial Review Of Settlements Under The Class Action Fairness Act And Deference Due To The Department Of Justice And State Attorneys General, Michael E. Solimine, Hailey E. Martin

Journal of Legislation

The Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA) makes it easier to remove consumer class actions from state to federal court and, among other things, regulates the procedure of federal court approval of settlements of those cases. CAFA requires that before any court approval or disapproval, the parties must notify the Attorney General of the United States, and the attorneys general of states where members of the class live, of the pending settlement in order to receive any objections or other input. While such notice is frequently sent, since most class action cases settle out of court, it appears that …

Big Business As Gun Control, David B. Kopel, George A. Mocsary, Bhav Ninder Singh

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Gun control increasingly bypasses direct legislative enactments by co-opting the commercial marketplace. Financial institutions and insurers often face regulatory pressures, frequently articulated through vague notions of “reputational risk,” to terminate or restrict services for lawful firearms businesses and advocacy groups. The debanking tactic, seen in initiatives such as Operation Choke Point, can deny essential financial products to firearm owners, merchants, and organizations, curtailing the practical exercise of constitutionally protected rights. Simultaneously, government agencies sometimes pursue warrantless data collection from bank records and merchant category codes, building profiles of lawful purchasers and eroding privacy and due-process norms.

Social media platforms compound …

"Price Discrimination" Discrimination, Talia B. Gillis

Faculty Scholarship

Credit price personalization, where lenders set prices based on individual borrower and loan characteristics, is a common practice across many loan types, with conventional accounts of its harms focusing on the ways in which risk-based pricing, or setting prices based on borrowers’ credit risk, can lead to disparities for protected groups like racial minorities and women. This Article examines an often-overlooked yet potentially harmful form of price personalization — charging borrowers different rates based on their willingness-to-pay, known as price discrimination — and argues that this practice can exploit vulnerable borrowers, including protected groups like racial minorities and women, by …