Consumer Protection Law Commons^™

Consumer Credit In America: Past, Present, And Future, Pamela Foohey, Jim Hawkins, Creola Johnson, Nathalie Martin

Faculty Scholarship

We began organizing this symposium at the start of 2016 with the recognition that consumer credit and financial services were in a state of flux prompted in significant part by the Great Recession. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act brought with it the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB’s creation marked the most significant moment in modern American consumer law. Consumers gained an advocate charged with protecting them through researching, monitoring, and regulating the providers of consumer financial products and services, enforcing federal consumer financial protection laws, and, as importantly, empowering consumers.

Disruptive Platforms, Margot Kaminski

Publications

No abstract provided.

Blocking The Courts: The Trump Triple Threat, Joanne Doroshow

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Forced Arbitration’S Lethal Consequence, Joanne Doroshow

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Why Intra-Brand Dealer Competition Is Irrelevant To The Price Effects Of Tesla's Vertical Integration, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

"In recent years, Tesla Motors (recently renamed Tesla) has been engaged in a state-by-state ground way for the right to distribute it’s all-electric vehicles directly to consumers. The car dealers' lobby, with the political backing of General Motors, has fiercely battled back, relying on decades-old state dealer protection laws to argue that Tesla is legally bound to distribute through franchised dealers. Through a combination of favorable state legislative and judicial decisions, Tesla has won the right to distribute directly in many states, but remains categorically barred from direct distribution in important states like Michigan and Texas--and hence all direct distribution …

Financial Reform: Making The System Safer And Fairer, Michael S. Barr

Articles

In the fall of 2008, the financial crisis crushed the U.S. economy and plunged the country into the Great Recession. The crisis shuttered American businesses, cost millions of Americans their jobs, and wiped out home values and household savings. The macro effects hit hardest and were the longest lasting for those least able to bear the brunt of the crisis. It was devastating to middle-income families and perhaps even more so to low- and moderate-income households, who had little financial buffer (Barr 2012a). Financial stability, never robust for these families, dropped precipitously (Barr and Schaffa 2016). Both in the United …

The Taking Economy: Uber, Information, And Power, Ryan Calo, Alex Rosenblat

Articles

Sharing economy firms such as Uber and Airbnb facilitate trusted transactions between strangers on digital platforms. This creates economic and other value but raises concerns around racial bias, safety, and fairness to competitors and workers that legal scholarship has begun to address. Missing from the literature, however, is a fundamental critique of the sharing economy grounded in asymmetries of information and power.

This Essay, coauthored by a law professor and a technology ethnographer who studies work, labor, and technology, furnishes such a critique and proposes a meaningful response through updates to consumer protection law. Commercial firms have long used what …

Calling On The Cfpb For Help: Telling Stories And Consumer Protection, Pamela Foohey

Scholarly Works

Since it began operating in 2011, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has handled more than a million complaints regarding consumer financial product and services. Beginning in June 2015, the CFPB began publishing consumers’ narratives submitted with their complaints. This Article analyses a random sample of 5,000 of these narratives to assess how people engage with the complaint mechanism in light of the CFPB’s role in processing complaints. I find that people predominately use the complaint function for two distinct purposes: to express their anger and frustration about companies’ practices, or to express sadness and fear about how companies’ practices …

Trusting Big Data Research, Neil M. Richards, Woodrow Hartzog

Scholarship@WashULaw

Although it might puzzle or even infuriate data scientists, suspicion about big data is understandable. The concept doesn’t seem promising to most people. It seems scary. This is partly because big data research is shrouded in mystery. People are unsure about organizations’ motives and methods. What do companies think they know about us? Are they keeping their insights safe from hackers? Are they selling their insights to unscrupulous parties? Most importantly, do organizations use our personal information against us? Big data research will only overcome its suspicious reputation when people can trust it.

Some scholars and commentators have proposed review …

How Privacy Distorted Standing Law, Felix T. Wu

Articles

No abstract provided.

Consumer Credit In America: Past, Present, And Future, Pamela Foohey, Jim Hawkins, Creola Johnson, Nathalie Martin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In September 2016, in conjunction with Law & Contemporary Problems at Duke University School of Law, we organized a symposium on Consumer Credit in America. We sought to assess the state of consumer credit in America — to review and examine its recent history, to consider arguments for and against regulation, and to discuss the potential for future innovation. This is the introduction to the volume of articles coming out of that symposium.

Calling On The Cfpb For Help: Telling Stories And Consumer Protection, Pamela Foohey

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Since it began operating in 2011, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has handled more than a million complaints regarding consumer financial product and services. Beginning in June 2015, the CFPB began publishing consumers’ narratives submitted with their complaints. This Article analyses a random sample of 5,000 of these narratives to assess how people engage with the complaint mechanism in light of the CFPB’s role in processing complaints. I find that people predominately use the complaint function for two distinct purposes: to express their anger and frustration about companies’ practices, or to express sadness and fear about how companies’ practices …

The Skeleton Of A Data Breach: The Ethical And Legal Concerns, Hilary G. Buttrick, Jason Davidson, Richard J. Mcgowan

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

After over thirty data breaches spanning the third and fourth quarter of 2012, Forbes magazine labeled the summer of 2012 as “The Summer of the Data Breach.” Four years later, businesses across multiple industries have suffered brand-image damage and paid millions of dollars in remedial expenses; we are living in the era of the mega breach. In 2014, companies such as Target, Home Depot, JP Morgan Chase, Anthem, Sony, UPS, Jimmy John’s, Kmart, Neiman Marcus, Community Health Systems, and the White House suffered data breaches. The Home Depot breach alone resulted in the loss of “56 million credit card accounts,” …

Tightenting The Loophole: The Role Of Fee-Shifting Statutes In Resolving The Growing Problem Of Servicing America's Student Loan Debt, Katheryn E. Marcum

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Expanding The Credit Box, David J. Reiss

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

The mortgage market of the early 2000s provided mortgage credit to too many people who could not make their monthly payments on the terms offered. The pendulum has now swung. Today’s market offers very few unsustainable mortgages, but it fails to provide credit to some who could afford them. That means that the credit box is not at its socially optimal size. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should make it a priority to review the regulatory regime for non-Qualified Mortgages in order to ensure that the functional credit box is expanded to more closely approximate the universe of borrowers who …

Manipulating, Fast And Slow: The Law Of Non-Verbal Market Manipulations, Shmuel I. Becher, Yuval Feldman

Cardozo Law Review

Consumers make purchasing decisions in various markets every day. Contrary to common belief, such decision-making is often not the result of deliberate analysis of information or of rational thinking. Rather, it is frequently based on feelings, sensations and intuition. Purchasing decisions are not made in a vacuum and are regularly influenced by sellers' manipulation and selling tactics.

It is well documented that people receive a substantial part of the information they possess via non-verbal communication. One of the most alarming aspects of this reality is that consumers are mostly unaware of non-verbal cues and the ways they can influence them. …

Moving Towards Harmonization Of The Food Safety Standards: Role Of The Tpp And Ttip Agreements, Ksenia A. Petrovets

Journal of Food Law & Policy

We are now less dependent on locally available food resources that we have ever been. The continuing industrialization of food production, the advancement in technologies and the rapid development of supply chains granted us the luxury of immediate access to a variety of products originating from local supermarkets all over the world. This, along with the greater level of food production industrialization, inevitably comes the rise of related food safety risks. Because of the enlargement of producing operations, an emerging safety threat in one place may result in a foodborne illness outbreak thousands of miles away from its place of …

Local And State Governments Are Taking The Stage When It Is Fda's Curtain Call - Are Local And State Governments' Safety Warnings Preempted By Federal Law?, Melissa M. Card

Journal of Food Law & Policy

Eliminated from fad diets, sworn off by celebrities, and frantically reformulated out of processed foods, added sugars have been deemed the new nutritional scoundrel. Recent studies from the American Heart Association, the World Health Organization, and the American Cancer Association demonstrate that the consumption of added sugar leads to increased risks of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and gout. While all foods containing added sugar are deemed unhealthy, Sugary-Sweetened Beverages ("SSBs") are said to be especially toxic by the American health community, by virtue of these beverages' being excessively high in added sugar content, low in satiety, and incomplete in compensation …

Will Consumers Be In The "Dark" About Labels On Genetically Engineered And Modified Foods?, Hilary Nat

Journal of Food Law & Policy

In the 1900s, the United States began to sell genetically engineered foods. One of the first genetically engineered foods sold in the United States and approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was the Flavr Savr tomato. The tomato's genetic structure was modified to prevent softening which allowed it to ripen after being picked. In the United States, statistics demonstrate that 92% of com, 94% of soybeans, and 94% of cotton sold is genetically engineered. In addition, it is estimated that 75% of the processed foods sold in supermarkets around the United States contain ingredients that are products of …

Energy Drink Regulations: Why The Time For More Fda Authority Is Not Ripe And How States Can Protect Children Without Unjustly Infringing On Adult Autonomy, Larry D. Treat

Journal of Food Law & Policy

In December of 2011, Anais Fournier ("Anais"), a fourteen-year-old from Maryland, was at the mall with her friends when she drank a twenty-four ounce Monster energy drink. Within twenty-four hours, Anais consumed a second twenty-four ounce energy drink. Together, the two Monster energy drinks Anais consumed contained around 480 milligrams ("mg") of caffeine. A few hours after the second drink, Anais went into cardiac arrest and later died from cardiac arrhythmia. An autopsy found that caffeine toxicity caused Anais's arrhythmia and impeded her heart's ability to pump blood. As it turns out, Anais suffered from a preexisting heart condition called …