by Brian Wolfman The Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA) was sold to Congress in large part on the argument that state courts were abusing the class action–for instance, by certifying class actions that should not have been certified–and harming the interests of law abiding corporations that do business nationally. CAFA sought to remedy […]
A recent post explained that many federal agency health and safety regulations must be sent for review to the Office of Management Budget (OMB), where they can be delayed or die at OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Sometimes regulations emerge from OIRA looking different from what they looked like when they arrived. […]
Last Friday, Paul Levy posted on the Michigan Court of Appeals' new ruling, Thomas Cooley Law School v. Doe, concerning the rights of anonymous on-line critics to retain their anonymity during litigation. Karen Sloan has now written this article providing more details on the ruling and quoting Paul.
Last Friday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued its 2011 National Occupant Protection Use Survey (NOPUS). The agency explains that "at any given daylight moment across America, approximately 660,000 drivers are using cell phones or manipulating electronic devices while driving, a number that has held steady since 2010. According to separate NHTSA data, more […]
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 […]