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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Over the past day, we have seen lots of articles on yesterday's decision in Campbell-Ewald v. Gomez. Our own coverage is here. Most simply describe the decision, but here are a few that add some commentary: A nice editorial in The New York Times. Coverage in The Wall Street Journal. Analysis from Howard Wasserman at […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
The Washington Post reports: Goldman Sachs said Thursday it will pay roughly $5 billion to settle federal and state probes of its role in the sale of shoddy mortgages in the years leading to the housing bubble and subsequent financial crisis. Coming nearly eight years after the crisis, the settlement is by far the largest […]
by Paul Alan Levy A few years ago, Gordon Austin, a Georgia dentist from the small town of Carrollton, about 50 miles west of Atlanta, was indicted on multiple charges stemming in part from Medicare fraud and in part for a series of incidents in which he beat patients with a dental instrument. According to […]