Megan McArdle writes at Bloomberg on the downfall of the CFPB’s anti-arbitration rule, and why the results of most class actions, though expensive to provide, are not greatly valued by consumers. She also quotes me on one reason why surveys find (paradoxically or otherwise) higher consumer satisfaction with the experience of arbitration that you’d think from the campaign against it:
The alternative to lawsuits, arbitration, is supposed to follow the same laws as courts, and to do so more quickly and without a lot of the costly procedure. As a result, says Walter Olson of the Cato Institute, consumers are in general surprisingly satisfied with the arbitration experience, because it provides the kind of justice we imagine courts will: You sit down and tell your story in your own words. In court, by contrast, everything has to proceed according to complicated rules of evidence, with opposing counsel interrupting to tell the court that you can’t say certain things.:
More on the recent Congressional rejection of the CFPB’s regulation: Thaya Brook Knight. And in a new paper, David Noll (Rutgers) finds the new administration’s rollback of anti-arbitration rules to be piecemeal in nature and of only middling success so far. Earlier here.