The Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation remains under assault in the Republican controlled House of Representatives. At a hearing yesterday before the House Financial Services Committee's subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, law professor Thomas Merrill and lawyer C. Boyden Gray testified that certain aspects of Dodd-Frank are likely unconstitutional. Merrill's testimony is here and Gray's testimony is here. Here is an excerpt from the subcommittee's press release:
A panel of
constitutional scholars testified at the subcommittee hearing today,
highlighting the constitutional deficiencies and legal uncertainties of
Dodd-Frank. “It is no mere coincidence that
Dodd-Frank both entrenches the Too Big to Fail problem and violates the
Constitution’s system of checks and balances,” said C. Boyden Gray, a
former White House Counsel and Ambassador to the European Union who is
now a founding partner in a law firm. “By giving regulators
effectively unlimited power, and by removing the checks and balances
that ordinarily prevent the abuse of power, Dodd-Frank fosters the very
conditions that give rise to Too Big to Fail.” Thomas W. Merrill, a professor at
Columbia Law School, said in his testimony that Dodd-Frank raises
“serious constitutional questions” and may violate, among other
provisions, the Due Process Clause, Article III, the First Amendment,
and the Bankruptcy Clause. “Dodd-Frank says you can be sent to jail for
up to five years for disclosing the truth about a civil case brought
against you by the government.”
