The Radical Potential of Consumer Financial Protection with Vijay Raghavan

We speak with Vijay Raghavan, Professor of Law at the Brooklyn Law School, about his recent article, “The Radical Potential of Consumer Financial Protection,” published in Boston College Law Review in April 2025. Raghavan builds on the work of constitutional money theorists, as well as his legal experience in the public sector. In particular, he argues that consumer financial protection is an essential and potentially radical response to the "finance franchise,” a predominantly anti-democratic process by which modern governments delegate the money creation process to private actors like banks. The consensus in contemporary left sociological and legal scholarship dismisses consumer financial protection as a rearguard effort to sustain neoliberal capitalism. Raghavan, by contrast, reconceptualizes consumer financial protection as a vital counterweight to legally structured domination in financial markets. By tracing the history of this struggle from the early 20th century to the present, Raghavan provides a powerful legal framework for today's debtor movements, including the national campaigns to cancel student and medical debt. In doing so, Raghavan offers a forward-looking vision for how to build a durable consumer financial protection regime capable of reclaiming democratic authority in the post-Trump era.

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Music by Nahneen Kula: www.nahneenkula.com