Digital Commons Network^™

Regulation, Deregulation, And Happiness, Jeffrey L. Harrison

Jeffrey L Harrison

Happiness, in general, is in many respects the topic du jour. A great deal of theoretical and empirical work has been devoted to dissecting it. Studies of happiness have crossed over to law, and the result is an addition to the long list of the list of “law and” interdisciplinary areas. In fact, in 2010, Eric Posner and Matthew Alder presented an excellent book of readings the title of which is Law and Happiness. Peter Henry Huang has written the definitive survey of law and happiness literature. My own writing has reflected on the promise of happiness research and the …

The Internet Of Things And Wearable Technology: Addressing Privacy And Security Concerns Without Derailing Innovation, Adam D. Thierer

Adam Thierer

This paper highlights some of the opportunities presented by the rise of the so-called “Internet of Things” and wearable technology in particular, and encourages policymakers to allow these technologies to develop in a relatively unabated fashion. As with other new and highly disruptive digital technologies, however, the Internet of Things and wearable tech will challenge existing social, economic, and legal norms. In particular, these technologies raise a variety of privacy and safety concerns. Other technical barriers exist that could hold back IoT and wearable tech — including disputes over technical standards, system interoperability, and access to adequate spectrum to facilitate …

Estimates For Worldwide Laboratory Animal Use In 2005, Katy Taylor, Nicky Gordon, Gill Langley, Wendy Higgins

Gill Langley, PhD

Animal experimentation continues to generate public and political concern worldwide. Relatively few countries collate and publish animal use statistics, yet this is a first and essential step toward public accountability and an informed debate, as well as being important for effective policy-making and regulation. The implementation of the Three Rs (replacement, reduction and refinement of animal experiments) should be expected to result in a decline in animal use, but without regular, accurate statistics, this cannot be monitored. Recent estimates of worldwide annual laboratory animal use are imprecise and unsubstantiated, ranging from 28–100 million. We collated data for 37 countries that …

Response To Comments: The Informal Housing Debate Remains Open, Jonathan P. Bell

Jonathan P. Bell

UrbDeZine, November 12, 2014. In this follow up article on informal housing in Los Angeles, I respond to comments and take on critics who devalue housing code enforcement. I argue that unpermitted housing is inherently unsafe, and unsafe housing is not a viable housing option. I call for all sides of the informal housing debate to come together to look for solutions. URL: http://losangeles.urbdezine.com/2014/11/12/response-to-comments-the-informal-housing-debate-remains-open/

Troubled Waters: Diana Nyad And The Birth Of The Global Rules Of Marathon Swimming, Hadar Aviram

Hadar Aviram

On September 3, 2013, Diana Nyad reported having completed a 110-mile swim from Cuba to Florida. The general enthusiasm about her swim was not echoed in the marathon swimming community, whose members expressed doubts about the integrity and honesty of the swim. The community debate that followed gave rise to the creation of the Global Rules of Marathon Swimming, the first effort to regulate the sport. This Article uses the community’s reaction to Nyad’s deviance to examine the role that crime and deviance plays in the creation and modification of legal structures. Relying on Durkheim’s functionalism theory, the Article argues …

Testimony Before The Committee On Energy And Commerce, Subcommittee On Environment And Economics, U.S. House Of Representatives, Hearing On Constitutional Considerations: States Vs. Federal Environmental Policy Implementation July 11, 2014, Rena I. Steinzor

Rena I. Steinzor

No abstract provided.

Old Lessons For New Governance: Safety Or Profit And The New Conventional Wisdom, Eric Tucker

Eric M. Tucker

New governance theory has a large following in academia and is exerting an influence in numerous spheres of regulatory policy. Yet in the area of occupational health and safety, new governance is hardly new at all. Indeed, it is fair to say that it in many ways what are now labelled new governance concepts were first articulated and applied in the 1972 Robens Report, Safety and Health at Work. This included its critique of command and control legislation and its emphasis on the need to develop better self-regulation. This paper critically examines new governance models in OHS regulation. In the …

Giving Voice To The Precariously Employed? Mapping And Exploring Channels Of Worker Voice In Occupational Health And Safety Regulation, Eric Tucker

Eric M. Tucker

In most contemporary occupational health and safety (OHS) regimes, great emphasis is placed on amplifying worker voice in regulation through worker health and safety representation in the employers’ OHS management system. Historically, these regimes were designed on the assumption that the workers who would use these mechanisms were full-time workers having secure jobs with their current employers. This is manifestly no longer true, posing a serious challenge to the efficacy of these regimes. After setting out the historical context of worker voice in OHS regulation, this paper begins by mapping out eight channels of worker voice based on the combination …

A Global Lottery And A Global Premium Bond, Tony Addison, Abdur Chowdhury

Abdur R. Chowdhury

Proposals are evaluated, from both an economic and an ethical viewpoint, for development funding through a global lottery, along with a complement to this: a global premium bond (a loan instrument in which the interest takes the form of a lottery prize, the capital being repayable on request, so that it has the characteristics of a savings product, which makes it potentially attractive to ethical investors). The chapter starts by looking at how a global lottery might work, evaluating the issue by discussing lottery operators and their regulation, the market for lotteries, competition between the global lottery and national lotteries, …

Predatory Lending Laws And The Cost Of Credit, Anthony Pennington-Cross, Giang Ho

Anthony Pennington-Cross

Various states and other local jurisdictions have enacted laws intending to reduce predatory and abusive lending in the subprime mortgage market. These laws have created substantial geographic variation in the regulation of mortgage credit. This article examines whether these laws are associated with a higher or lower cost of credit. Empirical results indicate that the laws are associated with at most a modest increase in cost. However, the impact depends on the product type. In particular, loans with fixed (adjustable) rates are associated with a modest increase (decrease) in cost.

The Tobacco Diaries: Lessons Learned And Applied To Regulation Of Dietary Supplements, Joanna K. Sax

Joanna K Sax

This Article examines the future role of the FDA in the regulation of the dietary supplement industry. To address the role of the FDA in the twenty-first century with respect to the dietary supplement industry, Part I of this Article begins by describing the dietary supplement industry and the role of the FDA in this industry. In Part II, this Article provides a brief exposé of the tactics used by the tobacco industry to evade regulation. The purpose of Part II is to provide insight into the tobacco industry’s ability to manipulate consumers and discount scientific proof of the harmful …

The Evolution Of Innovation And The Evolution Of Regulation: Emerging Tensions And Emerging Opportunities In Communications, John W. Mayo

John W Mayo

Changes to an industry’s core technologies inevitably create tension for regulatory institutions. This is true for any sector experiencing persistent disruptive innovation, and that has been the defining feature of the communications industry for the last two decades or longer. In very short order, a century of switched voice communication networks have been supplanted by new, packet-based voice, video and data networks, rendering both the legal and regulatory framework hammered out for the switched-voice era increasingly strained. This incongruity has created tangible regulatory asymmetries. Wireline telephony provided by a “telco” is regulated by the Federal Communications Commission under Title II …

The Durability Of Private Claims To Public Property, Bruce R. Huber

Bruce R Huber

Property rights and resource use are closely related. Scholarly inquiry about their relation, however, tends to emphasize private property arrangements while ignoring public property — property formally owned by government. The well-known tragedies of the commons and anticommons, for example, are generally analyzed with reference to the optimal form and degree of private ownership. But what about property owned by the state? The federal government alone owns nearly one-third of the land area of the United States. One could well ask: is there a tragedy associated with public property, too? If there is, here is what it might look like: …

The Effect Of Regulation On Statement Disclosures In The 1915 Moody's Manuals, Jeffrey Archambault, Marie E. Archambault

Marie E. Archambault

United States firms in the early 20th century were subject to public and private regulation. Forms of regulation included rate regulation and stock exchange listing requirements. These regulations created incentives to report income statement information. This study utilizes the 1915 Moody’s Analyses of Investments to test whether regulated firms in the United States reported more income statement information than unregulated firms. Rate regulation influenced utilities to report income statements more frequently than industrial companies. Stock market listing requirements also influenced the reporting of income statements. Therefore, the results indicate that both public and private regulations influenced financial reporting in the …

Converting Garages Into A Dissertation: A Conversation With Jacob Wegmann, Jonathan P. Bell

Jonathan P. Bell

UrbDeZine, June 17, 2014. In part 1 of the article, I highlight that burgeoning scholarship on "informality" in the U.S. housing market fails to address the implementation side of planning: the regulation and enforcement of unpermitted dwelling units. Part 2 includes a Q&A with PhD candidate Jacob Wegmann on his groundbreaking dissertation examining the impacts of extralegal dwelling units on the political economy and housing market in Southeast Los Angeles County. The enforcement perspective is core to Wegmann's study. URL: http://losangeles.urbdezine.com/2014/06/17/converting-garages-into-a-dissertation-a-conversation-with-jacob-wegmann/

Social Media And Entrepreneurship: The Case Of Food Trucks, Scott J. Wallsten, Corwin Rhyan

Scott J. Wallsten

While the use of social media by firms is nearly ubiquitous, there has been little analysis of its effectiveness in helping small businesses succeed in a highly competitive market. To begin studying this question, we created an extensive dataset on over 250 mobile food trucks—a dynamic, somewhat homogenous, and low-entry cost business that is highly dependent on social media for its business model—which operated in the Washington, DC metro area from 2009 to 2013. We explore how their use of social media and Internet services like Twitter, Facebook, and business webpages effect their ability to stay in business. We find …

Probiotics: Finding The Right Regulatory Balance, Diane E. Hoffmann, Claire M. Fraser-Liggett, Frank B. Palumbo, Jacques Ravel, Karen H. Rothenberg, Virginia Rowthorn

Karen H. Rothenberg

Some products marketed as drugs should be excused from Phase I trials, but safety and efficacy claims for dietary supplements should be more tightly regulated.

Probiotics: Finding The Right Regulatory Balance, Diane E. Hoffmann, Claire M. Fraser-Liggett, Frank B. Palumbo, Jacques Ravel, Karen H. Rothenberg, Virginia Rowthorn

Virginia Rowthorn

Some products marketed as drugs should be excused from Phase I trials, but safety and efficacy claims for dietary supplements should be more tightly regulated.

The Monopoly Myth And Other Tales About The Superiority Of Lawyers, Leslie C. Levin

Leslie C. Levin

The legal profession’s control of much of the market for legal services is justified by the claim that only licensed lawyers can effectively and ethically represent clients. This article challenges that claim. A review of a number of studies suggests that experienced nonlawyers can provide competent legal services in certain contexts and in some cases, can seemingly do so as effectively as lawyers. There is also little evidence that lawyers’ legal training, the bar admission requirements, or lawyers’ psychological characteristics make them more trustworthy than nonlawyer legal services providers. The article considers some recent initiatives, such as Washington’s approval of …

El Principio De Precaución En La Jurisprudencia Constitucional Colombiana: Incertidumbre Científica Y Omisiones Selectivas, Camilo Ossa, Daniel Monroy

Camilo Ossa

En el presente artículo se propone hacer una lectura crítica al principio de precaución, buscando profundizar, de manera específica, algunas cuestiones que minan el equilibrio del principio como instrumento guía para la toma decisiones de quien corresponde tomarlas. Así, el artículo está estructurado en dos partes, (i) por un lado se aborda la cuestión teórica, desarrollando la concepción que, en la doctrina, se tiene frente al principio, teniendo en cuenta dos aspectos esenciales como son: las implicaciones que supone afronta la “incertidumbre científica”, elemento fundamental del principio; y, la defensa de la tesis según la cual en muchos casos la …

Curb Your Enthusiasm For Pigouvian Taxes, Victor Fleischer

Victor Fleischer

Pigouvian (or "corrective") taxes have been proposed or enacted on dozens of products and activities that may be harmful in excess: carbon, gasoline, fat, sugar, guns, cigarettes, alcohol, traffic, zoning, executive pay, and financial transactions, among others. Academics of all political stripes are mystified by the public’s inability to see the merits of using Pigouvian taxes more frequently to address serious social harms.

This enthusiasm for Pigouvian taxes should be tempered. A Pigouvian tax is easy to design—as a uniform excise tax—if one assumes that each individual causes the same amount of harm with each incremental increase in activity on …

Financial Planning And Financial Instruments: 2013 In Review, 2014 In Prospect, Mark Brimble, Ciorstan Smark

Ciorstan Smark

The Global Financial Crisis (GFC); changes in regulation; issues in public perception and trust have contributed to a troubled 2013 for financial planners. As financial planning and wealth management providers seek to bolster their professional status, the Financial Planning Education Council’s National Curriculum and Accreditation Framework and ASIC’s minimum training requirements are also a space to watch.

In prospect, 2014 will offer opportunities and challenges in the form of a changed government; regulatory changes; accreditation challenges and the hope of the recruitment of strong financial planning and wealth management professionals for the future.

Regulation Of Alcohol Advertising: Policy Options For Australia, Sandra C. Jones, Ross Gordon

Sandra Jones

A systematic search of academic databases was conducted to identify all refereed papers published between 1990 and 2012 on the regulation of alcohol advertising in Australia and three comparison countries (New Zealand, Canada and the UK). This paper reviews the codes that apply to alcohol advertising in each of the four countries, research into the effectiveness of these codes, and the small body of research into consumer attitudes towards alcohol advertising regulation. This review adduces considerable evidence that alcohol advertising influences drinking behaviours, and that current regulatory systems based on co-regulation and voluntary regulation (as is the case in Australia) …

Regulating Mass Surveillance As Privacy Pollution: Learning From Environmental Impact Statements, A. Michael Froomkin

A. Michael Froomkin

US law has remarkably little to say about mass surveillance in public, a failure which has allowed the surveillance to grow at an alarming rate – a rate that is only set to increase. This article proposes ‘Privacy Impact Notices’ (PINs) — modeled on Environmental Impact Statements — as an initial solution to this problem. Data collection in public (and in the home via public spaces) resembles an externality imposed on the person whose privacy is reduced involuntarily; it can also be seen as a market failure caused by an information asymmetry. Current doctrinal legal tools available to respond to …

Forum Proceedings From “Uavs: Pros Vs Cons Symposium” In Toronto, Canada, June 2013, Katina Michael

Associate Professor Katina Michael

Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), widely referred to as drones, are becoming increasingly relevant in civilian as well as military applications. UAS have been used by emergency services to help respond to and map environmental crises, to find missing people, to fight fires, and respond to traffic accidents. Their use in policing and border patrol functions is being trialled in many Western countries. Like other recent technologies (mobile phones etc), as they become cheaper and easier to use, they are likely to become much more prevalent in civilian life across a range of applications.

This conference will examine the current state …

Ivf And The Law: How Legal And Regulatory Neglect Compromised A Medical Breakthrough, Steve Calandrillo

Steve P. Calandrillo

The rise of assisted reproductive technology like in vitro fertilization (IVF) as a method of human reproduction represents a remarkable medical achievement. It has allowed millions of infertile and same-sex couples to have children who were previously only the subject of their unrequited dreams. Live births and success rates have increased dramatically in the past decade, so much so that many fertility clinics “guarantee” a baby to clients who sign up. But with success comes inevitable downsides. Everyone knows that the price tag is steep, but given the demand, that obstacle seems to deter relatively few determined individuals. More insidious …

Analyzing Effects And Implications Of Regulating Charitable Hybrid Forms As Charitable Trusts: Round Peg And A Square Hole?, John Tyler

John E. Tyler III

One of the principle motivating forces driving the creation, expansion, and use of new formal hybrid business structures is a desire among entrepreneurs, investors/funders, and policymakers to dedicate financial capital and other resources to areas of society that might not be as clearly or easily pursued under traditional forms. People are seeing opportunities to address social problems in new and different ways with financial resources, business models, and compensation structures and incentives not normally targeted to such problems with the same vigor, if at all. They have wanted clearer and simpler legal contexts within which to pursue their purposes and …

The Eye Of The Beholder: Participation And Impact In Telecommunications (De)Regulation, Dorit Reiss

Dorit R. Reiss

The California Public Utilities Commission addressed both pricing deregulation and universal service in telecommunications during the last decade. Both decisions had a similar cast of characters, and similarly elaborate processes. In relation to price deregulation, the utilities positions were accepted on every issue addressed; in relation to universal service, consumer organizations’ positions were accepted in about 60% of the issues. This article tells the story of how those decisions were made, and examines the reasons for the difference in impact. The article examines and reject an explanation of capture; accepts in part a focus on the influence of the commissioner …

Probiotics: Finding The Right Regulatory Balance, Diane E. Hoffmann, Claire M. Fraser-Liggett, Frank B. Palumbo, Jacques Ravel, Karen H. Rothenberg, Virginia Rowthorn

Diane Hoffmann

Some products marketed as drugs should be excused from Phase I trials, but safety and efficacy claims for dietary supplements should be more tightly regulated.

Sec Preventative Measures Against Securities Violations And Fraud Post-Jobs Act, Kristie Benner

Kristie Benner

The purpose of the Securities Act and the Exchange Act is to supply investors with the necessary information to make informed decisions regarding an entity’s offerings. After the 2010 financial crisis, the economic crisis devastated the economy leaving many without jobs. In response to this economic recession, President Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act) into law in 2012 as one method of stimulating the economy. This Act deregulated the securities laws for small businesses in the hopes of creating jobs and invigorating the economy. These changes allow a small business more access to capital by reducing …