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Category Archives: Uncategorized
by Brian Wolfman In this SCOTUSblog post, Adam Chandler has repeated a study he did five years ago of cert-stage amicus filings at the U.S. Supreme Court. Chandler took a look at every cert.-stage amicus brief filed between May 19, 2009, and August 15, 2012. He found that "the [U.S.] Chamber [of Commerce] has cemented […]
by Brian Wolfman Congress crafts the outlines of federal regulation — sometimes providing little direction and other times giving more specifics — and delegates the rest of the job to expert federal agencies, which are duty bound to protect the people's interests in health, safety, and economic well-being (taking into account feasibility, costs and benefits, […]
We've posted many times about the D.C. Circuit's Noel Canning decision, which held that three putative recess appointments made by President Obama to the National Labor Relations Board were, in fact, not proper recess appointments and were thus invalid. Go, for instance, here, here, and here. Last week, the Congressional Research Service issued a report entitled The […]
by Paul Alan Levy The decision posted this morning by the Michigan Court of Appeals in Thomas Cooley Law School v. Doe is a victory for the Doe defendant, who gets the reversal that he sought, but is a mixed blessing for anonymous Internet speakers in future cases. A unanimous Court of Appeals decided that […]
On Monday, we posted about Chana Joffe-Walt's piece for "This American Life" called "Unfit for Work: The startling rise of disability in America." Joffe-Walt chronicled the rising number of people on federal disability benefits and discussed poor U.S. counties (focusing in particular on one county in Alabama) where 25% of all working age people receive […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced four enforcement actions against mortgage insurers that the CFPB believes are paying improper kickbacks to mortgage lenders in exchange for business. The CFPB filed complaints alleging violations of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (sometimes referred to as RESPA) and proposed consent orders against the four insurance companies […]
The Federal Trade Commission has warned operators of six websites that share information about consumers’ rental histories with landlords that they may be subject to the requirements of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). The letters inform the six operators that, if they collect information on tenants and their rental history and provide that information […]
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) yesterday announced two winners of its contest seeking ideas to block illegal robocalls. The two winners will receive $25,000 each. Both of their solutions "focus on intercepting and filtering out illegal prerecorded calls using technology to 'blacklist' robocaller phone numbers and 'whitelist" numbers associated with acceptable incoming calls. Both proposals […]
It is widely believed that a major cause of the financial crisis and economic collapse that began in 2008 was the extension of home loans to people who could not afford them. The Clinton and Bush Administrations have been criticized for promoting policies of loose home lending backed by federal guarantees. Today, it's harder for […]