You can request them by emailing westacademic@thomsonreuters.com.
You can request them by emailing westacademic@thomsonreuters.com.
Posted by Jeff Sovern on Friday, September 03, 2010 at 12:58 PM in Books, Teaching Consumer Law | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
We apologize for our recent failure to exhibit our obsession -- see our 9 earlier posts on the topic! -- with whether Elizabeth Warren will head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But we are back in business! An article in today's Washington Post explains that Warren has just pulled out from teaching contracts this coming semester at Harvard Law School:
When fall classes began Wednesday at Harvard Law School, Elizabeth Warren was scheduled to be teaching contract law to first-year students. But something happened on the way to the chalkboard. "I'm writing to let you know that Professor Jerry Frug will be teaching your Contracts class this term instead of Professor Elizabeth Warren," law school dean Martha Minow wrote to students on Tuesday, according to an e-mail obtained by The Washington Post. "Professor Warren regrets that she will not be able to teach you this fall and we regret the last minute change."
To read the whole article go here.
Posted by Brian Wolfman on Thursday, September 02, 2010 at 08:24 AM in Consumer Financial Protection Bureau | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Unless I'm missing something, this CNBC report is discussing energy traders' disappointment that the two storms moving toward the East Coast are not bad enough to cause energy prices to spike.
Posted by Brian Wolfman on Wednesday, September 01, 2010 at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The 10th Consumer Issues Conference will be held on September 30 and October 1 with the theme of Unlocking the Digital Marketplace: Legal and Ethical Issues. The location will be the UW Union on the campus of the University of Wyoming. The conference features speakers and workshops on selling, shopping and participating in the online world. Up to 8 CLE credits available.
The digital marketplace is becoming more pervasive but raises some special issues for consumers, including privacy of personal information, commercialization of social communications, fraud, and even criminal issues. At the same time, the digital marketplace can be a boon for entrepreneurs and job seekers, if used properly. This conference will bring to the forefront the ethical and legal issues associated with the digital marketplace in ways that can be used by consumers, businesses, attorneys and policy makers.
This year’s keynote speaker will be Professor Patrick Murphy, Marketing Ethics Professor from Notre Dame University. He will speak on Ethical Issues for Marketers and Consumers in the Online World. Also speaking will be Susan Linn, an author and psychologist who will present her documentary film Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood, as well as giving a plenary speech on Reclaiming Childhood from Corporate Marketers & Media Moguls. UW Communications Professor George Gladney will be joined by his colleague Professor Frank Millar for a closing plenary entitled Enduring Issues in Communication and Cyberspace.
Posted by Jeff Sovern on Monday, August 30, 2010 at 06:55 PM in Conferences, Internet Issues | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Today's Washington Post explains here that credit card reform is hitting college campuses. As we have discussed, the 2009 credit card reform legislation imposes restrictions on the marketing of credit cards to adults between ages 18 and 21, which is unusual, given that the law generally treats adults alike. Title III of the new legislation (sections 301 to 305) bars providing a credit card to a person under 21 unless that person has an adult co-signer willing to assume liability for debts incurred on the card or can independently meet certain income requirements. In addition, colleges are prohibited from offering students gifts as inducements to apply for credit. The schools must also disclose their financial relationships with credit card issuers. The Post article suggests that the legislation has changed industry practices; for example, Bank of America had ended on-campus marketing altogether.
Posted by Brian Wolfman on Friday, August 27, 2010 at 07:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted by Jeff Sovern on Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 10:22 PM in Credit Cards | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted by Jon Sheldon on Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 08:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Want to know what consumer law professors cover in class? Read The Content of Consumer Law Classes, forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer and Commercial Law. Here's the abstract
This paper reports on a 2010 survey of law professors teaching consumer protection, and follows up on a similar 2008 survey, which appeared in Jeff Sovern, The Content of Consumer Law Classes, 12 J. Consumer & Commercial L. 48 (No. 1, 2008), available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1139894. The 2010 survey found more uniformity in topic selection than the 2008 survey. All thirteen professors who taught survey courses reported that they taught common law fraud, UDAP statutes, the Truth in Lending Act, and the Fair Credit Reporting Act, while all but one covered the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act, and payday lending. In contrast, in 2008 no topics were explored by all the survey professors and three were discussed by all but one. Nevertheless, as in the 2008 survey, the professors varied considerably in selecting other topics. Professors responding to the 2010 survey reported keeping their syllabi current; for example, more than half the professors teaching survey courses covered the Credit CARD Act, enacted only a year before the survey was conducted, while all but two addressed the subprime crisis.
Posted by Jeff Sovern on Tuesday, August 24, 2010 at 10:45 PM in Consumer Law Scholarship, Teaching Consumer Law | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The CNNMoney website has a fascinating collection of accounts by former debt collectors, describing what they thought of the job (most but not all of them hated it) and why they left it. Here are a few excerpts:
Posted by Public Citizen Litigation Group on Tuesday, August 24, 2010 at 07:00 AM in Debt Collection | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
The AALS Section on Commercial and Related Consumer Law is seeking participants for a roundtable discussion at the AALS Annual Meeting and is also separately soliciting essays for a print symposium to follow.
The topic of both the roundtable discussion and the print symposium will be the federal Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 (commonly known as the
This new Act raises many new questions. How have the new regulations affected credit contracts and practices since their enactment? Will card issuers find ways around the legislation? Will the restrictions reduce the availability of credit and, if so, is that a good or bad result? Will the
Posted by Jeff Sovern on Monday, August 23, 2010 at 03:22 PM in Conferences, Consumer Law Scholarship, Other Debt and Credit Issues | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)