Assuring Financial Stability for Survivors of Domestic Violence: A Judicial Remedy for Coerced Debt in New York’s Family Courts

Domestic violence is a national crisis impacting more than one in three women and one in four men. Abuse is often experienced in nonviolent forms, including emotional, verbal and economic abuse. This note focuses on the harms of economic abuse and, specifically, coerced debt. As society’s understanding of the nuances of domestic violence deepens, many states, including New York, have recognized economic abuse as a unique harm and have empowered family courts to adjudicate such abuse. While promising, many states have yet to devise a suitable remedy for such harm. This critical gap leaves far too many survivors of abuse with damaged credit that they are unable to repair on their own. The impacts of coerced debt are far-reaching and create a number of devastating challenges for survivors as they attempt to exit abusive relationships and seek both physical safety and long-term stability. This note considers both New York domestic violence laws as well as federal laws, such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act and Violence Against Women Act, and proposes a multi-level federal-state solution that allows New York’s family courts to adjudicate and certify economic abuse so that survivors may correct their credit reports and work towards financial stability

Measuring Compensation from Credit Reporting Damage: A Comparison of Islamic, Saudi, and American Law in Light of Credit Information Reporting Acts

Although there was a simple way to practice credit reporting in the past, in its organized and developed form credit reporting is considered new to international society in general. The first act to regulate credit reporting was established in the last quarter of the twentieth century in the U.S.A. The novelty is even more evident in Saudi laws. The first act in Saudi Arabia was declared in 2008. In Saudi Arabia, credit reporting is associated with many legal issues that must be resolved with reference to both Shariah and Saudi Arabia law. Consequently, legal and Shariah solutions should be provided. This dissertation is a comprehensive study of credit reporting damage and remedies. It tackles issues related to definitions, history, and mechanisms of credit reporting in one section. In another section, this dissertation examines acts or failures to act as the basis for liability. These acts or failures to act may be performed by credit reporting agencies, users, or other entities or persons. This examination is presented in light of the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Credit Information Act and weighed against Islamic law to examine validity in Islamic law as the predominant law in Saudi Arabia. This dissertation also seeks to find weakness and strength in both laws and suggest improvements. Proving the breaches is an essential part to recovering damages. Methods and standards of proof in both legal systems have similarities and differences. Some types of damages inflicted upon consumers are unique to credit reporting, while other types of damages are similar to other legal theories. The most challenging issue is the measure of remedies in the credit reporting context. The types of damages shared by other legal theories share the same measurements of remedies. Nevertheless, damages unique to credit reporting have their own remedial measurements. This dissertation hopefully adds to legal academia, helps the judiciary in Saudi Arabia in interpreting the Credit Information Act, and helps improve deficiencies in the current legal framework of U.S and Saudi legal systems

The right to data protection in the US: the influence of GDPR in the US model

https://www.ester.ee/record=b536097

'Mastering the possibilities' : a sociology of credit, consumption, risk and identity in the United States

This thesis sociologically analyses the development of consumer credit within the United States and the forms through which it has been governed and regulated. It is demonstrated that, as the consumption of goods and services came to play an increasingly important role in the mediation of social life during the first half of the 20th century, consumer credit grew in scale and form, funded by mainstream finance capital. As articulated by economists, such credit was justified as ‘productive’, an essential element in the facilitation of mass consumption now seen as a fundamental corollary of mass production. The state, through legislation and new initiatives, sought to protect, direct and manage the market for credit in the interests of nurturing a wider social wellbeing. It is suggested that by the 1920s the instalment plan, underpinned by the ‘conditional sale’ contract form, represented a new, paradigmatic form of credit. With it, lenders channelled credit to consumers through carefully calibrated, bureau-legal processes which served to discipline and regulate credit use and repayments to prevent default losses. From the 1960s, with the cultural critique of mass society and the rise of new modalities of consumption concerned with lifestyle and self-identity, the widened size and scope of credit is demonstrated. Tracing the institutional development of the credit card, it is contended that this created a new paradigm of credit as a personalised, mobile resource to be drawn upon by individuals in the increasingly autonomous, market-derived living of their lives. Permeated by the political rationality of neo-liberalism, it is elaborated how the state’s regulation of credit has shifted on the basis of its perceived responsibility to promote this individualised, ‘enterprising’ mode of life