Law Commons^™

Cornography: Perverse Incentives And The United States Corn Subsidy, Anthony Kammer

Journal of Food Law & Policy

Among the most important functions we have afforded to the U.S. Congress is the power to reshape social and economic incentive structures through legislation. Proceeding from the enumerated powers under the Constitution and using a complex toolbox of legislative and regulatory innovations, the federal legislature has enormous power to transform the types of behavior that people will perceive as self-interested throughout our economy and thus how those same people are likely to act. Congress can, among other things, create new forms of criminal and civil liability, establish entitlement systems, subsidize industries, encourage behavior through the tax code, regulate interactions among …

The History And Political Economy Of The Hatch-Waxman Amendments, Erika Lietzan

Faculty Publications

Reform of the Hatch–Waxman generic drug framework is in the air. Scholars, consumer advocacy groups, regulated industry, and policymakers are engaged in heated debate about perceived shortcomings in the scheme, flaws, and unexpected loopholes. Changes in how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) implements the law, as well as changes to the law itself, are under serious consideration. These policymaking discussions take place against a backdrop of shared assumptions about the origins and nature of the original Hatch–Waxman legislation — assumptions that this Article claims are wrong. Convention wisdom holds that the Hatch–Waxman legislation was a delicate compromise privately …

Federalism And Drug Control, Michael M. O'Hear

Vanderbilt Law Review

Federalism issues have been neglected in the scholarship on drug control policy. This Article addresses both empirical and normative questions relating to federal-state-local relations in the "war on drugs." Contrary to common views of federal domination and national uniformity, drug control policy actually varies considerably from state to state. State diversity has increased since the mid- 1990s, when drug reformers began to use the ballot initiative to change state laws. While the federal government has contested these reforms, it has not sought to use its preemption powers to enforce federal preferences.

The Article employs public choice models to explain the …

State Laws And The Independent Judiciary: An Analysis Of The Effects Of The Seventeenth Amendment On The Number Of Supreme Court Cases Holding State Laws Unconstitutional, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

In recent years, the Seventeenth Amendment has been the subject of legal scholarship, congressional hearings and debate, Supreme Court opinions, popular press articles and commentary, state legislative efforts aimed at repeal, and activist repeal movements. To date, the literature on the effects of the Seventeenth Amendment has focused almost exclusively on the effects on the political production of legislation and competition between legislative bodies. Very little attention has been given to the potential adverse effects of the Seventeenth Amendment on the relationship between state legislatures and the federal courts. This Article seeks to fill part of that literature gap, applying …