As the NYT explains, "Paper bags and reusable plastic bags will be available at checkout counters for a 10-cent fee designed to prod shoppers to remember their own reusable bags, and to reduce the number of plastic bags that end up clogging rivers, snagged on trees or taking up space in landfills." The oddly-named "American […]
Yep, that's the topic of Essay: From the 'No Spittin', No Cussin' and No Summary Judgment' Days of Employment Discrimination Litigation to the 'Defendant's Summary Judgment Affirmed Without Comment' Days: One Judge's Four-Decade Perspective by U.S. District Judge Mark W. Bennett. Here is the no-nonsense abstract: Nearly seventy-five years after its birth, the time has […]
That's what the economic data suggest, at least the data through 2012. After reproducing what Matthew Yglesias calls the most important chart about the American economy you'll see this year, Yglesias explains: For a long time, most of the gains from economic growth went to the bottom 90 percent of the income distribution. And, after […]
The Times has the story under the headline Tougher Shield for Soldiers Against Predatory Lenders. The proposed regulation closes loopholes like these described in the Times story: The law set a 36 percent interest rate cap on a range of high-cost loan products. But the protections applied to a narrow sliver of loans, covering only […]
Forbes last week had this article on class action cases. The article is surprising for its overall favorable treatment of the topic, given that, as the article states, "[t]hese sorts of lawsuits aren’t our cup of tea here at Forbes." An interview with Jonathan Selbin at the law firm Lieff Cabraser gave the reporter a […]
Check out an illuminating New Yorker commentary about the success of government programs providing homes for homeless people. Many policy approaches to homelessness assume that society should help homeless people get other aspects of their lives in order before they transition to permanent housing. That’s the wrong order, argues the New Yorker’s James Surowiecki, with […]
Raymond H. Brescia and Nicholas M. Martin, both of Albany have written The Price of Crisis: Eminent Domain, Local Governments, and the Value of Underwater Mortgages, forthcoming in 24 Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review (2014). Here's the abstract: Governments at all levels in the U.S. have deployed a range of tactics to […]
Michael Lewis at Bloomberg View reports on a This American Life story on 46 hours of tapes secretly recorded by a Fed employee embedded at Goldman Sachs. An excerpt from Lewis's story: * * * In meetings, Fed employees would defer to the Goldman people; if one of the Goldman people said something revealing or […]
Read this article by Michael Corkery and Jessica Sliver-Greenberg. Here's an excerpt: The thermometer showed a 103.5-degree fever, and her 10-year-old’s asthma was flaring up. Mary Bolender, who lives in Las Vegas, needed to get her daughter to an emergency room, but her 2005 Chrysler van would not start. The cause was not a mechanical […]