Lawrence Gostin has written Tackling Obesity and Disease: The Culprit Is Sugar; the Response Is Legal Regulation, which discusses a series of regulatory reforms aimed at reducing sugar consumption. Why? Nearly 40% of the American public is obese, and more than 70% is either obese or overweight. Here is Gostin's abstract: It is staggering to observe […]
Author Archives: Brian Wolfman
Law prof Michael Graetz has written The 2017 Tax Cuts: How Polarized Politics Produced Precarious Policy. Here's the abstract: In this lecture, Michael Graetz contends that the new tax law is unstable. This is hardly surprising because it was rushed through Congress in record time with only Republican votes and no ability for public comments on […]
Law profs Kenneth Abraham and Robert Rabin have written Automated Vehicles and Manufacturer Responsibility for Accidents: A New Legal Regime for a New Era. Here is the abstract: The United States is on the verge of a new era in transportation, requiring a new legal regime. Over the coming decades, there will be a revolution in […]
AP reporter Ken Sweet explains that Big Banks Saved $3.6B in Taxes Last Quarter Under New (Tax) Law. An excerpt: The nation's six big Wall Street banks posted record, or near record, profits in the first quarter, and they can thank one person in particular: President Donald Trump. While higher interest rates allowed banks to earn […]
Following up on Jeff's post yesterday, read Nikitra Bailey's piece in the American Banker entitled Scrapping CFPR auto lending rule would only lead to more discrimination. Here's an excerpt: A group of senators is working to make it easier for automobile dealers to discriminate against consumers of color, setting them up to pay unfair additional fees on their loans. […]
Some of the people who read this blog — both lawyers and injured patients — must respond to preemption defenses in their medical-product litigation. You may want to read Catherine Sharkey's Field Preemption: Opening the 'Gates of Escape' from Tort Law. Here is the abstract: Richard Epstein remains a (lone) staunch defender of field preemption of […]
Law prof Benjamin Zipursky has written The Monsanto Lecture: Online Defamation, Legal Concepts, and the Good Samaritan. Here's the abstract: Federal and state courts around the country – aided by academics on almost all sides – have completely misread the Communications Decency Act [“CDA”] § 230(c). This widely cited provision was designed to protect Internet service […]
Law prof Jim Hawkins has written Protecting Consumers as Sellers. Here's the abstract (with a few words added at the end by me): When the majority of modern contract and consumer protection laws were written in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, consumers almost always acted as buyers, and businesses almost always acted as sellers. As a […]
Read this NY Times op-ed by Georgetown Law's John Brooks entitled Don’t Let the G.O.P. Dismantle Obama’s Student Loan Reforms. Here's an excerpt (but read the whole thing): One of the most important — but least known — achievements of the Obama administration was the expansion of the income-driven repayment program for federal student loans. The program […]
We've blogged many times on the idea of taxing sugary drinks to stem the obesity/diabetes epidemic. Go, for instance, here and here. Critics claimed that these so-called soda taxes would do little to improve health while hurting grocers, particularly small grocers, who would get pummeled by consumers cutting back on purchases of sugary drinks. Nonetheless some cities enacted […]