Poverty Law Prof Blog

Last Blog Posting for Poverty Law Prof Blog: New Site is at http://maximinlaw.wordpress.com/

The editors of the Law Professor Blog Network have decided to eliminate less active blogs and, not being a blog with daily updates, the Poverty Law Prof Blog easily falls in this category and is therefore being eliminated from the Law Professor Blog Network.  The Poverty Law Prof Blog is therefore being migrated to a standalone blog that can be found at http://maximinlaw.wordpress.com/.  I am going to continue posting things as I see them or as they are sent to me, but the pace is going to continue to be about the same, though of course I welcome guest bloggers or any content suggestions.  =) To reach the blog editor, email erosser@wcl.american.edu.

Article of Interest: "The Case for Banning Subprime Mortgages"

Alan White, The Case for Banning Subprime Mortgages, 77 U. Cin. L. Rev. 617 (2008).  The paper -- it may be an earlier draft -- is on SSRN here.  The abstract is below:

While the subprime mortgage boom was in full swing, its benefits to American society were widely touted. Subprime mortgages were said to have increased homeownership. The subprime effect was supposed to have been especially strong for low-income and minority families previously unable to buy homes. The democratization of credit was also attributed to subprime mortgages. 

The empirical data do not support these welfare claims. The U.S. homeownership rate increased somewhat between 1994 and 2007. Subprime mortgages, however, were mostly made to existing homeowners to refinance debt; very few were made to first-time home buyers. The number of homes lost due to subprime foreclosures significantly exceeded the new homeowners added by subprime mortgages. Subprime mortgages also displaced the safer and lower-cost FHA loans that would otherwise have been made. Conventional prime mortgages for purchases fully accounted for the observed increase in homeownership. 

The welfare harms caused by subprime mortgage lending are readily measurable. They include the direct impact of more than two million foreclosures on families, the resulting property value losses, the social and fiscal impact on cities where subprime mortgages were concentrated, the price discrimination resulting in black and Latino homeowners paying unnecessarily high rates, and the broader impacts on the credit markets and the economy. 

The disastrous consequences of subprime mortgage lending were in part the result of deregulating mortgage interest rates. Similar harms can be prevented in the future by re-imposing reasonable interest rate limits on first-lien mortgages. FHA should be restored to its role as the primary provider of mortgages to first-time, low- and moderate-income home buyers.

Article of Interest: "Tainted Loans: The Value of a Mass Torts Approach in Subprime Mortgage Litigation"

First a somewhat related news story from last month: Vivian S. Toy, "Penetrating the Maze of Mortgage Relief," New York Times, June 12, 2009 (discussing the work of housing advocates). 

Ray Brescia has posted "Tainted Loans: The Value of a Mass Torts Approach in Subprime Mortgage Litigation" (forthcoming in the Univ. of Cincinnati Law Review) to SSRN.  The abstract is below:

A poison has entered the financial bloodstream. The subprime mortgage crisis and the wider financial crisis it has spawned have caused the erosion of trillions of dollars in wealth, the destruction of whole communities and the dislocation of millions of homeowners. Yet, unlike in other situations where toxic products have caused widespread harm, to date, we have not seen an avalanche of litigation, large jury awards, massive settlements compensating victims and financial ruin for the distributors of those products. Some of this is changing, however.

Litigation arising out of the present financial crisis is hitting the courts, including suits alleging discrimination in the proliferation of subprime mortgages, securities litigation, and claims under state unfair trade practices laws and common law fraud principles. Courts may soon be inundated with these cases and will need effective tools for handling them.

 

With some exceptions, the litigation presently underway is an incoherent collection of random cases, however. If we view the subprime mortgage crisis and the financial crisis that has followed as the result of the proliferation of toxic products, a mass tort approach to the subprime mortgage disaster would seem inevitable. Such an approach would include utilization of the following techniques: class actions; consolidation of related cases; global settlements; and aggregation of factual, liability and damages assessments. This article makes the case that subprime litigation should adopt the techniques utilized in mass torts cases to make the prosecution of such litigation more efficient, comprehensive and effective, while bringing those most responsible for the present financial crisis to justice. It is argued that these techniques are best suited to achieve what I identify as goals for a legal response to the financial crisis: reducing the number of foreclosures; correcting for past illegality in the mortgage market; uncovering and spreading information about the presence of such illegality; promoting the modification of outstanding mortgage loans; strengthening and expanding voluntary efforts to overcome past abuses in the market; preserving home values; and complementing legislative and regulatory efforts to improve oversight of financial markets. The article also concludes that a mass torts approach in the subprime litigation context is superior in terms of meeting these goals when compared to other potential legal responses:

i.e., individual litigation, individual bankruptcy, regulation, voluntary efforts and social insurance.

-E.R. erosser@wcl.american.edu

Article of Interest: "Can't Buy Me Love"

An interesting article came out that unfortunately seems to be available only on Lexis or Westlaw. But the article is: Aly Parker, Can't Buy Me Love: Funding Marriage Promotion Versus Listening to Real Needs in Breaking the Cycle of Poverty. 18 S. Cal. Rev. L. & Soc. Just. 493 (2009). -E.R. erosser@wcl.american.edu

Northeast People of Color Conference 2009: America's New Class Warfare?

From the Legal Scholarship Blog:

The Northeast People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference (NEPOC) 2009 will take place October 23-25 at the University at Buffalo Law School in Buffalo, New York.

During last year’s NEPOC, we experienced the monumental collapse of Lehman Brothers and subsequently, our financial and real estate sectors. Our nation and economy have been suffering since that time and there have been many interesting changes. This year our theme is “America’s New Class Warfare?”

For more details on the theme, please see the conference webpage

Instead of relying solely on invitations, this year’s NEPOC will also do a call for papers for the plenary panels. In addition, we are seeking works in progress, leaders for professional development workshops and nominees for the Haywood Burns – Shanara Gilbert Awards. The deadline for the submission of all these materials is June 30th.

-E.R. erosser@wcl.american.edu

New York Times Article on Microloans and Training

Story of interest:

• Kate Murphy, "Lending Talent, and Money, on a Micro Scale," New York Times, June 24, 2009.

-E.R. erosser@wcl.american.edu

Article of Interest: "The Ethics of Poverty Tourism"

This blog has done a number of posts on poverty tourism or related activities (the debate over Slumdog Millionaire) and a new paper of interest tackles this head on: Evan Selinger & Kevin Outterson, The Ethics of Poverty Tourism (BU School of Law Working Paper No. 09-29).  The abstract is below:

Poverty tours - actual visits as well as literary and cinematic versions - are characterized as morally controversial trips and condemned in the press as voyeuristic endeavors. In this collaborative essay, we draw from personal experience, legal expertise, and phenomenological philosophy and introduce a conceptual taxonomy that clarifies the circumstances in which observing others has been construed as an immoral use of the gaze. We appeal to this taxonomy to determine which observational circumstances are relevant to the poverty tourism debate. While we do not defend all or even most poverty tourism practices, we do conclude that categorical condemnation of poverty tourism is unjustified.

-Thanks to Susan Bennett for the heads up!  E.R. erosser@wcl.american.edu

(My) Parody Article

Excuse the self-promoting aspect of this posting!  My parody article has been published.  The article is about becoming a professor but might be of interest to readers of this blog because it includes a lengthy section on class and the legal academy (the section of the paper entitled "learning to like brie").  The article is: Ezra Rosser, On Becoming "Professor": A Semi Serious Look in the Mirror, 36 Fl. St. Univ. L. Rev. 215 (2009) and can be found on SSRN.

-E.R. erosser@wcl.american.edu

Article of Interest: "Freedom, Want and Economic and Social Rights: Frame and Law"

Katherine Young has posted "Freedom, Want and Economic and Social Rights: Frame and Law" 24 Maryland J. of Int. L. 176 (2009) to SSRN.  Abstract below:

In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognized the aspiration for everyone to enjoy freedom from want and particular economic and social rights. Sixty years after the proclamation of the Universal Declaration, it is important to review its meaning and its effects in the context of significantly different legal, political, economic and cultural landscapes. To approach this task, this article employs the unusual device of considering a Norman Rockwell painting of "Freedom from Want". This painting, well-known in the United States, responded to the local wartime political culture, and depicted the private enjoyment of material security in patriarchal, consumerist and culturally uniform terms. This article employs the themes made evident in the painting to underscore the assumptions made in the text of the Universal Declaration. Having outlined this reading, it suggests an alternative framework for understanding economic and social rights. Firstly, economic and social rights provide an important frame around redistributive contestations that strive for universalism in expression and the location of institutional responsibility in response. Secondly, economic and social rights ground legal norms, which are in some cases enforceable and in others available to exert a different kind of pressure on legal decision-makers. As frame and as law, economic and social rights provide an important pragmatic justification for the Universal Declaration's continuing relevance.

-E.R. erosser@wcl.american.edu

Barbara Ehrenreich on the focus on the new poor vs the already poor in the recession

An Op-Ed of interest that I was happy to see, having read too many stories of the ultrarich becoming the merely rich -- I just finished Roger Lowenstein's When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management (2000) (a cautionary story about the rise of leverage, new-fangled investment forms, and loose regulation). 

•  Barbara Ehrenreich, Op-Ed: "Too Poor to Make the News," New York Times, June 13, 2009. 

-E.R. erosser@wcl.american.edu

Article of Interest: "No Way Out: An Analysis of Exit Processes for Gang Injunctions"

Lindsay Crawford, "No Way Out: An Analysis of Exit Processes for Gang Injunctions," 97 Cal. L. Rev. 161 (2009).  An explanation of the gang injuctions from the article: "gang injunctions restrict the activities of named gang members in a variety ways, often by prohibiting gang members from associating with one another, wearing gangrelated clothing, or from appearing in specified places and conducting certain activities."  The focus is on the need to have mechanisms to exit such injunctions. 

-E.R. erosser@wcl.american.edu

Cornell Law Review issue on Property and Obligation

Quite interesting Cornell Law Review issue:

SPECIAL ISSUE
Property and Obligation

A Statement of Progressive Property
Gregory S. Alexander, Eduardo M. Peñalver, Joseph William Singer & Laura S. Underkuffler

Articles

The Social-Obligation Norm in American Property Law
Gregory S. Alexander
Land Virtues
Eduardo M. Peñalver

Responses

Virtue and Rights in American Property Law
Eric R. Claeys
A Few Questions About the Social Obligation Norm
Jedediah Purdy
Mind the Gap: The Indirect Relation Between Ends and Means in American Property Law
Henry E. Smith
Should Property Scholars Drop Economics for Virtue?  A Skeptical Comment
Katrina M. Wyman

Essay

Democratic Estates: Property Law in a Free and Democratic Society
Joseph William Singer

Reply

The Complex Core of Property
Gregory S. Alexander

-E.R. erosser@wcl.american.edu

Call for Papers from Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law

From the Legal Scholarship Blog:

The Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law, the legal publication of the American Bar Association’s Forum on Affordable Housing and Community Development Law, is currently seeking submissions from students, professors, and practitioners. The Journal publishes full-length articles, book reviews, and shorter commentaries on a wide range of affordable housing and community and economic development issues.

The Fall 2009 issue will focus on “Housing and Community Development in the Economic Crisis.” Submissions of papers or proposals for papers should be e-mailed to Paulette Williams at pwillia8@utk.edu no later than June 15, 2009.

Writer’s guidelines can be found here.

-E.R. erosser@wcl.american.edu

Labor Organizer and Immigrant Rights Center First Person Account in New York Times

An interesting article: Elena Herrada, "We Came to Work," New York Times, June 9, 2009.

Also of note, a story about the decline of Big Law: Alan Feuer, "A Study in Why Major Law Firms Are Shrinking," New York Times, June 5, 2009. 

-E.R. erosser@wcl.american.edu

New Issue of Pathways: Going Global: Antipoverty Lessons from Around the World

The Spring issue of Pathways, the poverty, inequality, and social policy magazine of The Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality, has now been published.  The issue (full PDF available here) includes:

Editors' Note by David Grusky and Christopher Wimer

TRENDS
Getting to Equal: Progress, Pitfalls, and Policy Solutions on the Road to Gender Parity in the Workplace
Have we "stalled out" in the historic march toward gender equality in the workplace? Pamela Stone weighs the evidence and makes the case for a new way forward.

RESEARCH IN BRIEF
New research developments
A surprising trend in wealth inequality, the biological determinants of poor children's academic performance, the long-term effects of job displacement, and other cutting-edge research.

GOING GLOBAL: ANTIPOVERTY LESSONS FROM AROUND THE WORLD
Flexicurity
Joshua Cohen and Charles Sabel argue that the time has come to build a 21st century labor market modeled on key principles of Denmark's "flexicurity" system.
Pro-Poor Stimulus: Lessons from the Developing World
Martin Ravallion looks to antipoverty programs in developing countries to understand how developed nations like the United States can provide stimulus while reducing long-term poverty.
Combating Poverty by Building Assets: Lessons from Around the World
Ray Boshara describes the key features of asset-building programs throughout the world and examines how the United States can apply them to achieve economic security for the poor.
Northern Exposure: Learning from Canada�s Response to Winner-Take-All Inequality
Jacob S. Hacker describes how the United States and Canada have taken two different roads and why the Canadian road provides lessons that the United States might take to heart.

INTERVENTIONS
Spotlight On...Growing Power and the Urban Farming Movement
In our new "Spotlight On" feature, we talk with Growing Power's Will and Erika Allen about the potential and future of urban agriculture in combating poverty

-E.R. erosser@wcl.american.edu
NOTE: I am teaching in my law school's Chile Summer Program (my photos here) and for that reason have had few posts and will probably continue to for two more weeks.