Law Commons^™

[Review Of The Book Social Security: A Critique Of Radical Proposals], Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] This book consists of six essays on Social Security. Charles Meyer leads off with a survey of the history of Social Security, its funding problems, and a radical reform proposal by Peter Ferrara to phase out the system. The remaining essays address various features of Social Security.

Estimating The Effects Of Changing Social Security Benefit Formulas, Gary S. Fields, Olivia S. Mitchell

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] The U.S. Social Security system faces serious financial difficulties in both the short and the long run. The short-run problem is that the system has very meager financial reserves. In the long run—after the year 2010, when the post-World-War-II baby-boom generation reaches retirement age—the financial problems of Social Security will intensify because of population aging and the consequent decline in the ratio of workers to retirees.

These problems have led to proposed reforms aimed at assuring the financial stability of the system. The question addressed here is: what effects would these reforms have on three variables—retirement ages, retirement incomes, …

An Overview Of The U.S. Retirement Income Security System And The Principles And Values It Reflects, Kathryn L. Moore

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article is designed to provide an overview of the U.S. retirement income security system from a comparative law perspective. Like many countries, the U.S. has a three tier pension or retirement income system, with the three tiers consisting of (1) Social Security, (2) employment-based pensions, and (3) individual savings. Thus, superficially, the U.S. retirement income security system resembles that of many around the world. Yet, in other ways, such as its focus on individual rights and responsibility, the U.S. system is unique.

The article begins by discussing the nine guiding principles of the U.S. Social Security system as identified …

Revising Canada's Ethical Rules For Judges Returning To Practice, Stephen Ga Pitel, Will Bortolin

Dalhousie Law Journal

It has recently become more common for retired Canadian judges to return to the practice of law This development raises an array of ethical considerations and potential threats to the integrity of the administration of justice. Although most codes of legal ethics contemplate the possibility of former judges returning to practice, the rules on this particular topic are dated, under-analyzed, and generally inadequate. This article reviews the Canadian ethical rules that specifically relate to former judges and identifies their shortcomings. In doing so, the authors consider, for comparative purposes, Canadian ethical rules directed at former public officers who return to …

Protecting Your Retirement Savings From Potential Creditors, Pension Action Center, Gerontology Institute, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Pension Action Center Publications

State and federal laws provide strong protections to New England residents to shield their retirement savings from creditors. The particular protections available depend on whether you have filed for bankruptcy, how your retirement savings are kept, and where you live.

“We Cannot Remain Morally Neutral”: Howard A. Glickstein, Dean, Touro Law Center, 1986-2004, Jeffrey B. Morris

Jeffrey B. Morris

No abstract provided.

Privatization And The Future Of Social Security In America, Eric B. Sposito

Eric B Sposito

Examining the fiscal condition of the social security system in America and the effects of the plans proposed to deal with future O.A.S.D.I. shortfalls.

There is a very real fear that when the time is right the politician on the national level will come to some sort of compromise that will endanger the retirement prospects for all Americans.

Upon close examination the financial crises in the social security trust fund is not a crisis at all. The minor adjustments that need to be made in order to secure the funding for this essential defined benefit pension plan, disability, and survivor …

Coming Off The Bench: Legal And Policy Implications Of Proposals To Allow Retired Justices To Sit By Designation On The Supreme Court, Michael C. Dorf, Lisa Mcelroy

Michael C. Dorf

Senator Patrick Leahy recently introduced a bill that would override a New-Deal-era federal statute forbidding retired justices from serving by designation on the Supreme Court of the United States. The Leahy bill would authorize the Court to recall willing retired justices to substitute for recused justices. This Article uses the Leahy bill as a springboard for considering a number of important constitutional and policy questions, including: whether the possibility of 4-4 splits justifies substitution of a retired justice for an active one; whether permitting retired justices to substitute for recused justices would violate Article III’s requirement that there be “one …

The Benefits Of Opt-In Federalism, Brendan Maher

Brendan Maher

The Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) is a historic and controversial statute that mandates people make insurance bargains. Unacknowledged is an innovative mechanism ACA uses to select the law that governs those bargains: opt-in federalism.

Opt-in federalism -- in which individuals choose between federal and state rules -- is a promising theoretical means to make and choose law. This Article explains why, and concludes that the appeal of opt-in federalism is independent of ACA. Whatever the statute’s constitutional fate, future policymakers should consider opt-in federalist approaches to answer fundamental but exceedingly difficult questions of health and retirement law.

Till Death Do Us Part: Chief Justices And The United States Supreme Court, Todd C. Peppers, Chad M. Oldfather

Scholarly Articles

In this Essay, we identify and explore an additional institutional difficulty, which bridges these last two components of the proposed Act. Prior commentary has chronicled the phenomenon of Justices serving beyond the point at which they are able to perform their duties. It has also addressed the unique powers and responsibilities of the Chief Justice, with some arguing that the administrative aspects of the role should be divorced from the effectively life tenure associated with a position on the Court. We wish to highlight a connection. The unique powers and responsibilities of the center chair may make Chief Justices even …

Judicial Retirement And Return To Practice, Mary Clark

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This Article engages recent scholarly debates about U.S. Supreme Court tenure and retirement practices, specifically those concerning the merits of adopting eighteen-year term limits or mandatory retirement for Supreme Court Justices. It broadens the discussion by including all Article III judges and by addressing former Article III judges’ return to practice following resignation or retirement, which has been largely ignored in the literature to date despite what I have found to be the return-to-practice rate of over forty percent in the last two decades.

This Article advocates retaining life tenure because it promotes institutional and individual judicial independence better than …

The Law And Policy Of Judicial Retirement, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi, Eric A. Posner

Faculty Scholarship

Lifetime tenure maximizes judicial independence by shielding judges from political pressures, but it creates problems of its own. As is widely known, judges with judicial independence may implement their political preferences or shirk in other ways. Less attention has been given to another problem: that judges will remain in office after their abilities degrade as a result of old age. The U.S. federal system addresses these problems in an indirect way. When judges’ pensions vest, they receive a full salary regardless of whether they work or not; thus, the effective compensation for judicial work falls to zero. Judges can retire, …