That's the name of this article by law professor Stephen Burbank and political scientist Sean Farhang. Its part of a larger study about the counterrevolution against private enforcement of legal rights. Here is the abstract: In this article we situate consideration of class actions in a framework, and fortify it with data, that we have […]
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Today's Washington Post reports on a ProPublica expose concerning the use of the drug Coumadin, a popular (in the sense of widely used) anti-coagulant used by many elderly people to prevent blood clotting. (The Post headline jumped out at me in part because two of my own relatives use or have used the drug in […]
On June 18, the FCC announced adoption of a set of a set of rules to resolve questions about the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. See our summary here. Last Friday, the FCC issued the declaratory ruling. The TCPA Blog has this business-side perspective.
Brian Wolfman blogged yesterday about a Washington Post story pointing out that fish oil supplements are being marketed to consumers to lower the risk of heart disease despite the absence of scientific evidence bearing out their effectiveness. The FDA allows manufacturers of the supplements to get away with making a "qualified health claim" that "supportive […]
In an opinion yesterday called Imelhoff Investments v. Alfoccino, Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rejected arguments that would limit the liability of senders of junk faxes under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). First, the court held that a plaintiff's standing in a junk fax case doesn't depend on whether […]
The Washington Post reports: No one knows exactly how much money hotels extract from resort guests in fees. A recent study by New York University found that hotels and resorts collected $2.25 billion in surcharges last year, but the number includes other add-ons. We do know that virtually no hotels disclose the fees in their […]
One of the many New Deal reforms enacted to help prevent another Great Depression was a requirement that the financial industry keep its commercial investment activities separate from its basic depository and lending activities so as to prevent the risks of the former from jeopardizing the latter. Congress, unfortunately, repealed that law (known as "Glass-Steagall," […]
…is the title of this eye-opening piece in 538.com, about a Gallup survey of community college presidents about the likelihood of free community college passing in their states. President Obama has proposed to fund two years of free community college “for responsible students across America” but even under a formula providing that the feds would […]
A provocative paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research this spring argues that, although most political arguments about the implications of income inequality "crucially assume that ordinary people know how high inequality is, how it has been changing, and where they fit in the income distribution," in fact "ordinary people have had little idea […]
Many of our readers likely have seen media reports that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is strengthening its label warning about the relationship between use of certain pain medications and heart attacks and strokes. The drugs are all in a drug class known as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs. Common over-the-counter NSAIDs that will have […]