Why did Florida drop standards for infant heart surgery?

Ars Technica asks this question amid concerns that the move may have motivated by contributions from the healthcare company whose poor track record prompted the drafting of standards in the first place: [A] 2014 medical review and a June 2015 report by CNN, which found that one particular medical facility, St. Mary’s Medical Center and Palm Beach […]

Harvard Board of Overseers candidates: make Harvard free

A slate of five candidates running for Harvard's governing board thinks Harvard's endowment is big enough that it can afford to great free tuition for all undergrads. The candidates — an interesting left-right alliance, including Ralph Nader on the left and four opponents of affirmative action on the right – also raise the concern that the current admission […]

DOT to push development of autonomous vehicles

The Times reported last week: With automakers and technology companies rushing to develop self-driving cars, the Obama administration on Thursday pledged to expedite regulatory guidelines for autonomous vehicles and invest in research to help bring them to market. … “We are bullish on autonomous vehicles,” [Transportation Secrecy Anthony] Foxx said. “The actions we are taking […]

Are Consumers Using the New CFPB Mortgage Disclosures to Shop Around?

Not so much, according to this story in the Boston Herald. Excerpt: [Apparently [buyers are] not [using the disclosures] so much. Bill Emerson, chief executive of Quicken Loans, the country’s second highest volume mortgage lender, says his firm is seeing no surge in shopping by applicants using the Loan Estimate. “I don’t think consumers are changing […]

Supreme Court Holds Offer of Judgment Does Not Moot a Class Action

In a much-anticipated ruling, the Supreme Court today held that a class-action defendant cannot moot a plaintiff’s case by making a pre-class-certification offer of judgment that would satisfy the individual plaintiff’s personal claims but not those of the class. The decision in Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, holds that such an offer does not moot the […]

Homo Lex? Will Law Make the Same Transition Economics Is?

by Jeff Sovern Bear with me for a moment.  As is well-known, Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein,in their important book Nudge, describe how classical microeconomics assumes that all people are rational. They call such rational people "Homo Economicus" or, for short, "Econs." But, as they also describe, and as Thaler elaborates on in his […]

Ben-Shahar & Chilton Study Finds Simplifying Privacy Disclosures Doesn’t Help

Omri Ben-Shahar and Adam S. Chilton both of Chicago have written Simplification of Privacy Disclosures: An Experimental Test. Here's the abstract: Simplification of disclosures is widely regarded as an important goal and is increasingly mandated by regulations in a variety of areas of the law. In privacy law, simplification of disclosures is near universally supported. […]

Drahozal Article on Confidentiality in Arbitration

Christopher R. Drahozal of Kansas has written Confidentiality in Consumer and Employment Arbitration, 7 Yearbook on Arbitration & Mediation ___ (forthcoming 2015). Here is the abstract: This article examines an apparent misperception among some commentators about the confidentiality of consumer and employment arbitration in the U.S. Arbitration is a private process—i.e., the public cannot attend […]