St. John's University Law Faculty Blog

Professor Jeff Sovern presented his paper, Validation and Verification Vignettes: More Results from an Empirical Study of Consumer Understanding of Debt Collection Validation Notices, at the Rutgers Law School Center for Corporate Law and Governance Workshop on Consumer Financial Protection Law on February 2.

On February 8, The Conversation published Sovern’s essay, “Consumers are biggest losers of Trump’s ongoing war on regulations.” The essay was republished in the online versions of the Houston Chronicle, the San Francisco Chronicle, UPI, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and a variety of other publichations.  Sovern wrote, in part:

President Donald Trump has been waging a war on regulation since he got into office on the ground that gov​ernment red tape costs the economy billions of dollars a year.

Among the victors in this battle have been energy companies, banks and the president himself, who recently promised he’s “just getting started.” Perhaps the biggest losers, however, have been consumers.

The best illustration of this is the neutering of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which began immediately after Mick Mulvaney stepped in as interim director in November.

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[W]hat has Mulvaney actually done since taking over?
While he pledged to be vigorous and consistent in enforcement of federal consumer financial law, he has also said that the bureau should bring cases reluctantly. As such, you might wonder how many he is actually filing.

The answer would be none.

The bureau has instead dropped a case, without explanation, against a group of payday lenders that charged consumers as much as 950 percent interest a year.

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For the next five months – or until the Senate confirms a permanent director – the CFPB is led by someone who once called it a “sad, sick” joke.

What is sad and sick, in my view, is that an agency established to protect consumers may be more eager to protect predatory lenders than consumers. And that is no joke.

Professor Rosemary Salomone’s Commentary, “Italian Court Pushes Back on the Race Towards English,” appeared in the February 3rd issue of University World News.

Professor Salomone examines the decision of Italy’s Consiglio di Stato (high administrative court) striking down the decision of Milan’s prestigious Polytechnic Institute in 2012 to offer all graduate programs in English beginning in 2014. Professor Salomone has been commenting on the case as it has worked its way through the Italian courts over the past five years. She now maintains that the several opinions that have emerged from the Italian administrative courts and the Constitutional Court together provide a well-developed framework for other European countries to consider as they weigh what is gained and what is lost and how to mitigate the harms as universities use English as a vehicle for internationalization to remain competitive in the global economy.