Sociological Perspectives

Older Americans’ Rising Bankruptcy Filings

08/06/18

Older Americans (age 65 and over) are increasingly likely to file bankruptcy and now comprise a larger proportion of the people who file bankruptcy -- and the effects are not small. Using data from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, in a new working paper just posted to SSRN -- Graying of U.S.

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Access to Justice, Consumer Bankruptcy Edition

06/26/18

The Great Recession, the CFPB's creation, the rise of debt buying, changes in the debt collection industry, and advances in data collection have encouraged more research recently into issues of access to justice in the context of consumer law and consumer bankruptcy.

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Debbie Does Damages: the Stormy Daniels Contract Clusterf*ck

03/08/18

There's been a lot of poorly informed reporting about the Stormy Daniels contract litigation, including in some quite reputable publications, but by reporters who just aren't well versed in legal issues.  For example, I've seen repeated reference to an "arbitration judge" (no such creature exists!) or to a "restraining order" (there's no enforceable order around as far as I can tell.

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People’s Pre-Bankruptcy Struggles -- New Paper from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project

02/20/18

The current Consumer Bankruptcy Project (CBP)’s co-investigators (myself, Slipster Bob Lawless, and past Slipsters Katie Porter & Debb Thorne) just posted to SSRN our new article (forthcoming in Notre Dame Law Review), Life in the Sweatbox.

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The Bootstrap Trap

02/07/18

I just had the pleasure of reading Duke Law Professor Sara Sternberg Greene's paper The Bootstrap Trap.  I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in the intersection of consumer credit and poverty law.

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Whitford on Law School Financial Aid

11/16/17

WhitfordAlthough technically

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More on Personal Debt and Multilevel Marketing Companies

08/08/17

Last year, I posted about John Oliver's segment on Last Week Tonight dissecting multilevel marketing (MLM) companies (aka pyramid schemes), and proposed a link between personal debt, bankruptcy, and MLM companies.

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