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Full-Text Articles in Law

Prosecutorial Discretion And Environmental Crime, David M. Uhlmann Jan 2015

Prosecutorial Discretion And Environmental Crime, David M. Uhlmann

Articles

In January 1991, just four weeks after joining the Justice Department’sEnvironmental Crimes Section as an entry-level attorney, I traveled to NewOrleans to attend an environmental enforcement conference. The conferencewas attended by hundreds of criminal prosecutors and civil attorneys from theJustice Department, as well as enforcement officials from the EnvironmentalProtection Agency (“EPA”). It was a propitious time for environmental protec-tion efforts in the United States. Less than two months earlier, President GeorgeH. W. Bush had signed the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, culminating aremarkable twenty-year period that created the modern environmental law sys-tem in the United States. My new office, …


Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson Jul 2014

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson

Articles

United States Negotiates Prisoner Exchange to Secure Release of U.S. Soldier Held in Afghanistan • United States Refuses to Grant Visa to Iranian UN Envoy • Multilateral Naval Code of Conduct Aims to Prevent Unintended Conflict in Contested Areas of East and South China Seas • Senate Approves Treaties to Regulate Fishing • United States Indicts Chinese Military Officials for Economic Espionage • U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Terminate Long-Running Efforts to Force Argentina to Pay Defaulted Sovereign Debt • United States Condemns Uganda’s Antigay Law as Violating Human Rights • President Barack Obama Certifies That U.S. Peacekeepers in Mali …


The Puzzling Presumption Of Reviewability, Nicholas Bagley Mar 2014

The Puzzling Presumption Of Reviewability, Nicholas Bagley

Articles

The presumption in favor of judicial review of agency action is a cornerstone of administrative law, accepted by courts and commentators alike as both legally appropriate and obviously desirable. Yet the presumption is puzzling. As with any canon of statutory construction that serves a substantive end, it should find a source in history, positive law, the Constitution, or sound policy considerations. None of these, however, offers a plausible justification for the presumption. As for history, the sort of judicial review that the presumption favors - appellate-style arbitrariness review - was not only unheard of prior to the twentieth century, but …


Prosecutorial Discretion And Environmental Crime, David M. Uhlmann Jan 2014

Prosecutorial Discretion And Environmental Crime, David M. Uhlmann

Articles

Prosecutorial discretion exists throughout the criminal justice system but plays a particularly significant role for environmental crime. Congress made few distinctions under the environmental laws between acts that could result in criminal, civil, or administrative enforcement. As a result, there has been uncertainty about which environmental violations will result in criminal enforcement and persistent claims about the overcriminalization of environmental violations. To address these concerns — and to delineate an appropriate role for criminal enforcement in the environmental regulatory scheme — I have proposed that prosecutors should reserve criminal enforcement for violations that involve one or more of the following …


Essential Health Benefits And The Affordable Care Act: Law And Process, Nicholas Bagley, Helen Levy Jan 2014

Essential Health Benefits And The Affordable Care Act: Law And Process, Nicholas Bagley, Helen Levy

Articles

Starting in 2014, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will require private insurance plans sold in the individual and small-group markets to cover a roster of "essential health benefits." Precisely which benefits should count as essential, however, was left to the discretion of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The matter was both important and controversial. Nonetheless, HHS announced its policy by posting on the Internet a thirteen-page bulletin stating that it would allow each state to define essential benefits for itself. On both substance and procedure, the move was surprising. The state-by-state approach departed from the uniform, federal …


Election Law's Lochnerian Turn, Ellen D. Katz Jan 2014

Election Law's Lochnerian Turn, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

This panel has been asked to consider whether "the Constitution [is] responsible for electoral dysfunction."' My answer is no. The electoral process undeniably falls well short of our aspirations, but it strikes me that we should look to the Supreme Court for an accounting before blaming the Constitution for the deeply unsatisfactory condition in which we find ourselves.


Who's In Charge Of Global Finance?, Michael S. Barr Jan 2014

Who's In Charge Of Global Finance?, Michael S. Barr

Articles

The global financial crisis caused widespread harm not just to the financial system, but also to millions of households and businesses and to the global economy. The crisis revealed substantive, fundamental weaknesses in global financial regulation and raised serious questions about whether national regulators and the international financial regulatory system could ever be up to the task of overseeing global finance. This Article analyzes post-crisis reforms with two questions in mind: First, how can we build an effective international financial architecture with more than one architect? Second, can we build a system that is legitimate and accountable? The Article suggests …


Responding To Agency Avoidance Of Oira, Nina A. Mendelson, Jonathan B. Wiener Jan 2014

Responding To Agency Avoidance Of Oira, Nina A. Mendelson, Jonathan B. Wiener

Articles

This Article proceeds as follows: Part I provides a background of the system of presidential oversight of regulation through OIRA review. Part II analyzes: (1) the incentives for agencies to cooperate with or avoid OIRA, (2) a broad array of agency avoidance tactics, and (3) corresponding response options (especially in a repeat-player relationship). Part III argues that response options to agency avoidance should not be unquestioningly pursued or rejected. Instead, they should be evaluated using many of the same principles OIRA employs in reviewing agency regulation, including a systematic consideration of the benefits and costs of particular response actions and …


Private Control Over Access To Public Law: The Perplexing Federal Regulatory Use Of Private Standards, Nina A. Mendelson Jan 2014

Private Control Over Access To Public Law: The Perplexing Federal Regulatory Use Of Private Standards, Nina A. Mendelson

Articles

To save resources and build on private expertise, federal agencies have incorporated privately drafted standards into thousands of federal regulations — but only by “reference.” These standards range widely, subsuming safety, benefits, and testing standards. An individual who seeks access to this binding law generally cannot freely read it online or in a governmental depository library, as she can the U.S. Code or the Code of Federal Regulations. Instead, she generally must pay a significant fee to the drafting organization, or else she must travel to Washington, D.C., to the Office of the Federal Register’s reading room. This law, under …


Assessing Transnational Private Regulation Of The Otc Derivatives Market: Isda, The Bba, And The Future Of Financial Reform, Gabriel V. Rauterberg, Andrew Verstein Jan 2013

Assessing Transnational Private Regulation Of The Otc Derivatives Market: Isda, The Bba, And The Future Of Financial Reform, Gabriel V. Rauterberg, Andrew Verstein

Articles

For the last twenty years, the dominant narrative of the over-the-counter derivatives market has been one of absent regulation, deregulation, and regulatory conflict, predictably resulting in disaster. This Article challenges this narrative, arguing that the global derivatives market has been subject to pervasive and harmonized regulation by what should be recognized as transnational private regulators. Recognizing the reality of widespread transnational private regulation of derivatives has significant implications, which this Article explores. Appreciating the actual regulatory status quo is essential if policymakers are to correctly diagnose problems, avoid past regulatory errors, and plan effective remedies. There are also advantages to …


How Insurance Substitutes For Regulation, Omri Ben-Shahar, Kyle D. Logue Jan 2013

How Insurance Substitutes For Regulation, Omri Ben-Shahar, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

Legal regulation of behavior requires information. Acquiring information about the regulated party's conduct, setting benchmarks by which that conduct is measured, and establishing the correct scale of payoffs for violating or following regulation are costly and require expertise and motivation. Thus, economic theories of rulemaking are often based on the relative information advantages that different regulatory bodies have and how that information can be harnessed to enhance incentives and thereby improve welfare. Government regulators, on average, do not have informational advantages. They are not paid for performance and thus may lack adequate incentives. They are not disciplined by market forces …


The President's Enforcement Power, Kate Andrias Jan 2013

The President's Enforcement Power, Kate Andrias

Articles

Enforcement of law is at the core of the President’s constitutional duty to “take Care” that the laws are faithfully executed, and it is a primary mechanism for effecting national regulatory policy. Yet questions about how presidents oversee agency enforcement activity have received surprisingly little scholarly attention. This Article provides a positive account of the President’s role in administrative enforcement, explores why presidential enforcement has taken the shape it has, and examines the bounds of the President’s enforcement power. It demonstrates that presidential involvement in agency enforcement, though extensive, has been ad hoc, crisis-driven, and frequently opaque. The Article thus …


Private Regulation Of Insider Trading In The Shadow Of Lax Public Enforcement: Evidence From Canadian Firms, Laura Nyantung Beny, Anita Anand Jan 2013

Private Regulation Of Insider Trading In The Shadow Of Lax Public Enforcement: Evidence From Canadian Firms, Laura Nyantung Beny, Anita Anand

Articles

Like firms in the United States, many Canadian firms voluntarily restrict trading by corporate insiders beyond the requirements of insider trading laws (i.e., super-compliance). Thus, we aim to understand the determinants of firms’ private insider trading policies (ITPs), which are quasi-contractual devices. Based on the assumption that firms that face greater costs from insider trading (or greater benefits from restricting insider trading) ought to be more inclined than other firms to adopt more stringent ITPs, we develop several testable hypotheses. We test our hypotheses using data from a sample of firms included in the Toronto Stock Exchange/Standard and Poor’s (TSX/S&P) …


Sales Between A Partnership And Non-Partners, Douglas A. Kahn Aug 2012

Sales Between A Partnership And Non-Partners, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

The code denies a deduction for a loss recognized on a sale or exchange between certain related parties. Two of the principal code sections that deny a deduction in that circumstance are sections 267(a)(1) and 707(b)(1)(A). Two regulatory provisions promulgated under section 267 apply the denial of a loss deduction rule to partnerships — reg. section 1.267(b)-1(b) and temp. reg. section 1.267(a)-2T(c), Question 2. I conclude that to the extent reg. section 1.267(b)-1(b) applies to section 267(a)(1), it is invalid and has been invalid since 1986. Also, two of the questions and answers in the temporary regulation are invalid.


United States--Certain Measures Affecting Imports Of Poultry From China: The Fascinating Case That Wasn't, Donald H. Regan Jan 2012

United States--Certain Measures Affecting Imports Of Poultry From China: The Fascinating Case That Wasn't, Donald H. Regan

Articles

US–Poultry (China) was the first Panel decision dealing with an origin-specific SPS measure, or with what the United States referred to as an ‘equivalence regime’. More specifically, it was the first instance in which the basis for the challenged measure was the claimed inability of the complainant country to enforce its own food-safety rules. Unfortunately, as the litigation developed, the very interesting novel issues raised by such a measure were not discussed. This essay discusses those novel issues – in particular, what sort of scientific justification or risk assessment should be required for a measure like this, and what SPS …


Facebook, The Jobs Act, And Abolishing Ipos, Adam C. Pritchard Jan 2012

Facebook, The Jobs Act, And Abolishing Ipos, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

Initial public offerings (IPOs)-the first sale of private firms' stock to the public-are a bellwether of investor sentiment. Investors must be bullish if they are putting their money into untested start-ups. IPOs are frequently cited in the business press as a key barometer of the health of financial markets. Politicians, too, see a steady flow of IPOs as an indicator that capital is fueling the entrepreneurial initiative that sustains the growth of new businesses. Growing businesses create jobs, so Republicans and Democrats can find common ground on the importance of promoting IPOs. That bipartisan consensus was on display this spring …


Should Mass Comments Count?, Nina A. Mendelson Jan 2012

Should Mass Comments Count?, Nina A. Mendelson

Articles

I am grateful to the Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law for the opportunity to reply to “Rulemaking vs. Democracy: Judging and Nudging Public Participation That Counts,” a terrific article by Professor Cynthia Farina, Mary Newhart, and Josiah Heidt of the Cornell eRulemaking Institute (“CeRI”). Farina, Newhart, and Heidt’s continuing commitment to structuring public engagement in e-rulemaking, both through scholarship and CeRI’s Regulation Room project, is one of the most hopeful signs for the future of that process. In their Article, the authors are concerned with agency treatment of large volumes of public comments in rulemaking, an increasingly common …


Enforcement Without Foundation? Insider Trading And China's Administrative Law Crisis, Nicholas C. Howson Jan 2012

Enforcement Without Foundation? Insider Trading And China's Administrative Law Crisis, Nicholas C. Howson

Articles

China's securities regulator enforces insider trading prohibitions pursuant to non-legal and non-regulatory internal "guidance." Reported agency decisions indicate that enforcement against insider trading is often possible only pursuant to this guidance, as the behavior identified is far outside of the scope of insider trading liability provided for in statute or regulation. I argue that the agency guidance is itself unlawful and unenforceable, because: (i) the guidance is not the regulatory norm required by the statutory delegation of power; and (ii) the guidance is ultra vires because (a) it addresses something substantively different from what is authorized under the statutory delegation, …


The Quest For A Sustainable Future And The Dawn Of A New Journal At Michigan Law, David M. Uhlmann Jan 2012

The Quest For A Sustainable Future And The Dawn Of A New Journal At Michigan Law, David M. Uhlmann

Articles

When I joined the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School in 2007, the first assignment I gave students in my Environmental Law and Policy class was John McPhee's Encounters with the Archdruid. It must have seemed like a curious choice to them, particularly coming from a professor who just three months earlier had been the Chief of the Environmental Crimes Section at the U.S. Department of Justice. The book was not a dramatic tale of courtroom battles. In fact, the book was not even about the law, and the clash of environmental values it depicted pre-dated the environmental …


Foreword: Rulemaking, Democracy, And Torrents Of E-Mail, Nina A. Mendelson Jan 2011

Foreword: Rulemaking, Democracy, And Torrents Of E-Mail, Nina A. Mendelson

Articles

This Foreword is meant as an initial foray into the question of what agencies should do with mass public comments, particularly on broad questions of policy. Part I discusses the extent to which congressional control, presidential control, and agency procedures themselves can ensure that agency decisions are democratically responsive. In view of shortcomings in both congressional and presidential control, I underscore the need to focus closely on rulemaking procedures as a source of democratic responsiveness. The possibility that agencies may be systematically discounting certain public submissions raises difficulties, and I present some examples. Part II makes a preliminary case that …


Securities Law In The Roberts Court: Agenda Or Indifference?, Adam C. Pritchard Jan 2011

Securities Law In The Roberts Court: Agenda Or Indifference?, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

To outsiders, securities law is not all that interesting. The body of the law consists of an interconnecting web of statutes and regulations that fit together in ways that are decidedly counter-intuitive. Securities law rivals tax law in its reputation for complexity and dreariness. Worse yet, the subject regulated-capital markets-can be mystifying to those uninitiated in modem finance. Moreover, those markets rapidly evolve, continually increasing their complexity. If you do not understand how the financial markets work, it is hard to understand how securities law affects those markets.


Taxation As Regulation: Carbon Tax, Health Care Tax, Bank Tax And Other Regulatory Taxes, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Jan 2011

Taxation As Regulation: Carbon Tax, Health Care Tax, Bank Tax And Other Regulatory Taxes, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

This paper addresses three questions: 1. Is regulation a legitimate goal for taxation? 2. Which tax is best suited for regulation? 3. Would it be better to allocate just one goal per tax among the major taxes (individual and corporate income tax and VAT)? It then analyzes the proposed bank tax and the enacted health care tax as regulatory taxes, and concludes that the first is desirable (as is a carbon tax) but the second is not.


Another Word On The President's Statutory Authority Over Agency Action, Nina A. Mendelson Jan 2011

Another Word On The President's Statutory Authority Over Agency Action, Nina A. Mendelson

Articles

In this short symposium contribution, I attempt first to add some further evidence on the interpretive question. That evidence weighs strongly, in my view, in favor of Kagan's conclusion that the terminology does not communicate any particular congressional intent regarding presidential directive authority. Assessed in context, the "whole code" textual analysis presented by Stack does not justify the conclusion that Congress, by delegating to an executive branch official, meant to limit presidential control. Independent agencies excluded, interpreting the terms of simple and presidential delegations to speak to directive authority fails, in general, to make sense of the various statutes. Absent …


Exclusion From Income Of Compensation For Services And Pooling Of Labor Occurring In A Noncommercial Setting, Douglas A. Kahn Jan 2011

Exclusion From Income Of Compensation For Services And Pooling Of Labor Occurring In A Noncommercial Setting, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

When cash is received for services, it typically will constitute gross income to the recipient.' But what if the payments are made in a noncommercial setting such as the payment by a parent to a child for mowing the lawn or performing household chores? As discussed later in this Essay, there are reasons to conclude that such payments do not constitute income. The problem of how to treat receipts from a noncommercial activity frequently arises in the context of an exchange of services. A similar problem arises when services are provided by several persons pursuant to a pooling of labor …


Ability To Pay, John A. E. Pottow Jan 2011

Ability To Pay, John A. E. Pottow

Articles

The landmark Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 ("Dodd-Frank") transforms the regulation of consumer credit in the United States. Many of its changes have been high-profile, attracting considerable media and scholarly attention, most notably the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ("CFPB"). Even specific consumer reforms, such as a so-called "plain vanilla" proposal, drew hot debate and lobbying firepower. But when the dust settled, one profoundly transformative innovation that did not garner the same outrage as plain vanilla or the CFPB did get into the law: imposing upon lenders a duty to assure a borrower's ability to repay. Ensuring a borrower's …


It Is Logic Rather Than Whom You Trust: A Rejoinder To Prof. Cohen, Douglas A. Kahn Jan 2010

It Is Logic Rather Than Whom You Trust: A Rejoinder To Prof. Cohen, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

This article is the continuation of an exchange that has taken place between Prof. Stephen B. Cohen and me concerning the validity of criticisms leveled by Chief Justice John Roberts on an opinion by then-Judge Sonia Sotomayor writing for the Second Circuit in the case of William L. Rudkin Testamentary Trust v. Commissioner. While affirming the Second Circuit’s decision, Chief Justice Roberts, writing for a unanimous Supreme Court, criticized and rejected Justice Sotomayor’s construction of the relevant statutory provision. In an article in the August 3, 2009, issue of Tax Notes, Cohen defended Justice Sotomayor’s construction of the statute and …


Populist Retribution And International Competition In Financial Services Regulation, Adam C. Pritchard Jan 2010

Populist Retribution And International Competition In Financial Services Regulation, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

The pattern of regulatory reform in financial services regulation follows a predictable pattern in democratic states. A hyperactive market generates a bubble, the bubble deflates, and much financial pain ensues for those individuals who bought at the top of the market. The financial mess brings the scrutiny of politicians, who vow "Never again!" A political battle ensues, with representatives of the financial services industry fighting a rearguard action to preserve its prerogatives amidst cries for the bankers' scalps. Regulations, carefully crafted to win the last war, are promulgated. Memories fade of the foolish enthusiasm that fed the last bubble. Slowly, …


Two Masters, Carl E. Schneider Jan 2010

Two Masters, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

American government rests on the principle of distrust of government. Not only is power within the federal government checked and balanced. Power is divided between the federal government and the state governments. So what if a state law conflicts with a federal law? The Constitution says that the "Constitution, and the Laws of the United States ... shall be the supreme Law of the Land; ... any Thing in the ... Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." Sometimes the conflict between federal and state law is obvious and the Supremacy Clause is easily applied. But sometimes ...


Against Secret Regulation: Why And How We Should End The Practical Obscurity Of Injunctions And Consent Decrees (Symposium: Rising Stars: A New Generation Of Scholars Looks At Civil Justice), Margo Schlanger Jan 2010

Against Secret Regulation: Why And How We Should End The Practical Obscurity Of Injunctions And Consent Decrees (Symposium: Rising Stars: A New Generation Of Scholars Looks At Civil Justice), Margo Schlanger

Articles

Every year, federal and state courts put in place orders that regulate the prospective operations of certainly hundreds and probably thousands of large government and private enterprises. Injunctions and injunction-like settlement agreements-whether styled consent decrees, settlements, conditional dismissals, or some other more creative title-bind the activities of employers, polluters, competitors, lenders, creditors, property holders, schools, housing authorities, police departments, jails, prisons, nursing homes, and many others. The types of law underlying these cases multiply just as readily: consumer lending, environmental, employment, anti-discrimination, education, constitutional, and so on. Injunctive orders, whether reached by litigation or on consent, suffuse the regulatory environment, …


Microfranchising: A Business Approach To Fighting Poverty, Deborah Burand, David W. Koch Jan 2010

Microfranchising: A Business Approach To Fighting Poverty, Deborah Burand, David W. Koch

Articles

Imagine a franchise network that trains, guides, and supports hundreds of poor women with little or no business experience to become successful business owners. Such "microfranchise" efforts, though relatively small in number, have been gathering steam in the development community and, recently, attracting the attention of the mainstream franchising indus- Deborah Burand try. Advocates have seized on microfranchising as a natural complement or follow-on to the widely acclaimed successes of the "microfinance" sector, which provides small-scale finance services to over 150 million of the world's poor. Microfranchising today is where microfinance was a decade or more ago. It is appropriate …