It has been almost twenty-five years since I got hooked on the puzzle of why boilerplate financial contracts, even among the most sophisticated parties, have inefficient terms. Steve Choi and I were taking Marcel Kahan’s Corporate Bond class and we ... Read full article
As Credit Slips readers know, I've been fighting the American Law Institute's Consumer Contracts Restatement project for several years. I think it started with good intentions, but it's unfortunately turned into a remarkably anti-consumer ... Read full article
The American Law Institute's membership will vote next Tuesday (the 21st) on whether to approve the ALI's Consumer Contracts Restatement project. Let me recap why you should care about this project: it opens the door for businesses to use ... Read full article
I did a podcast for the Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast about the American Law Institute's Consumer Contracts Restatement project. It's not often that you will see me on the same side of an issue as the podcast's host, Alan Kaplinsky , an ... Read full article
More problems are emerging with the legal research underlying the American Law Institute's Consumer Contracts Restatement project. The Consumer Contracts Restatement has been the subject of scholarly criticism for a while because of its novel ... Read full article
The Yale Journal on Regulation is holding an on-line symposium about the draft Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts, which is scheduled for a vote at the American Law Institute's annual meeting this May. The launching point for the symposium ... Read full article
Historian Ed Balleisen and I have just posted a paper of interest to Credit Slips readers who are interested in consumer protection, financial crises, and inputs into post-crisis policymaking more generally. I will let the abstract speak for itself: ... Read full article
A final installment to this evening's blog storm (you can tell that I'm procrastinating on exam grading...). The Consumer Financial Protection Act prohibits "unfair" acts and practices. "Unfair" is defined as an act or ... Read full article
Twelve senators have just written ... Read full article
Empirical studies have shown that minorities pay more for goods and services, and that they pay more to finance their purchases of those goods and services -- for instance, through subprime home and auto loans. Machine Bias , a new study from ProPublica ... Read full article
I'm trying something new this year. ... Read full article
I've been meaning to post about this recent decision , by Judge Rakoff in the Southern District of New York, denying motions by Uber and its CEO Travis Kalanick to compel arbitration of a class action lawsuit. ... Read full article
Earlier I posted about DIRECTV v. Imburgia. To recap the issue: DIRECTV's contract with subscribers (i) required arbitration, (ii) forbade class actions, and (iii) provided for litigation in court if "the law of [the subscriber's] ... Read full article
Credit Slips has great readers, and I'd love to encourage more of our readership to comment. ... Read full article
