Facebook is now ten years old. In this thought-provoking piece in the Washington Post, Michael Zimmer, who is an assistant professor at the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and is the director of the Center for Information Policy Research, reviews Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's views over the past ten […]
Author Archives: Scott Michelman
After protracted negotiations, the Post reports, the House and Senate have agreed on a farm bill that appears headed for passage and the President's signature. One of the key sticking points was how much to cut from the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps. The House sought $40 billion in cuts […]
A succinct summary of today's opinion in Starr Int'l v. Fed. Reserve Bank of N.Y.: This suit challenges the extraordinary measures taken by FRBNY to rescue AIG from bankruptcy at the height of the direst financial crisis in modern times. In light of the direct conflict these measures created between the private duties imposed by […]
Even as the Supreme Court has aggressively wielded the Federal Arbitration Act to preempt state-law contract rules that prevent arbitration, state courts have still been able to use traditional contract doctrines to invalidate arbitration agreements that are unfairly "one-sided" — for instance, where an agreement provides that a business gets to bring its claims in […]
Last week in Nativi v. Deutsche Bank, the California Court of Appeal applied the federal Protecting Tenants Against Foreclosure Act of 2009 (PTFA) to revive two renters' state-law claims against the bank that bought the property they were renting. Rosario Nativi and her son Jose Perez had been living in their home in Sunnyvale, California, […]
An antitrust dispute between two pharmaceutical companies over the licensing and pricing of HIV drugs was the setting for a significant ruling from the Ninth Circuit this week regarding discrimination against gay jurors. Applying heightened scrutiny to LGBT jurors, the court held that using a peremptory strike to dismiss a gay juror violates the constitution. […]
[Update: David and I were clearly on the same page this morning — by the time I finished writing this post, he had already just posted on the same case. I'll leave my thoughts up as a complement to his.] In an opinion sympathetic in tone to the problems of ordinary consumers but ultimately unable […]
One might have expected this, but here’s a study to back it up: a college applicant’s social network use can play a significant role in admissions. According to a study by Kaplan (as reported in this New York Times article from November), almost a third of 381 college admission officers surveyed said they “visited an […]
by Allen B. Isaacson, guest blogger On Thursday, Geoffrey Stone, University of Chicago’s Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, summarized the findings of a 300-page report titled Liberty and Security in a Changing World, released on December 12th by a panel of five law and intelligence experts (including Stone) appointed by President Obama […]
by Andrew D. Selbst, guest blogger Yesterday, the D.C. Circuit decided Verizon v. FCC, overturning part of the Federal Communications Commission’s Open Internet Order, and holding that the FCC lacked the authority under its current regulatory scheme to require broadband providers to comply with net neutrality. This decision, while entirely predictable, and probably legally correct, […]