Over the past week, several sources reported that the Trump Organization finally won its long-running battle to obtain a Chinese trademark. See, e.g., CNN (Feb. 17, 2017). A “squatter” had previously registered the trademark, which related to the use of the Trump name in construction-related businesses. But after years of litigation and administrative petitions, the […]
[2/21 3:10PM Update: The final signed versions of the Kelly guidance memos are available here. The final version of the relevant memo includes the same rationale about immigration court backlogs discussed in this post.] Are these the actual guidance memos? Two guidance memos signed by Secretary of Homeland Security Kelly recently surfaced that appear to […]
The Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act appears to be stalling. If and when it picks up again, the fate of section 7701(o) of the Internal Revenue Code will be far from the most consequential issue at stake. But section 7701(o), the provision added by the ACA that codifies the tax law economic […]
One of the most important cases the D.C. Circuit decided last year was the so-called Amtrak case. As I mentioned last month, the government’s cert petition was due February 6th. No petition, however, was filed. Instead, the United States determined that it would not seek certiorari at all. Accordingly, the panel decision — with its […]
In yesterday’s post on my new draft essay, Federalism and the End of Obamacare, I emphasized the benefits of returning more regulatory authority to the states. Today, I’d like to draw out a different point: the need for the federal government to take the lead when it comes to financing health reform. The states face […]
The D.C. Circuit just granted en banc review in Raymond J. Lucia Companies, Inc. v. SEC. I’ve discussed this case before. In short, the full D.C. Circuit (minus Chief Judge Garland) will decide whether the SEC’s administrative law judges are “employees” or “inferior officers.” If the ALJs are mere employees, then the manner of their […]
That’s the title of my new essay, which the Yale Law Journal Forum has published in draft form. Here’s the abstract. Federalism has become a watchword in the acrimonious debate over a possible replacement for the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Missing from that debate, however, is a theoretically grounded and empirically informed understanding of how […]
On March 2, 2017, the Center for the Study of the Administrative State is hosting a public policy conference on the Hill entitled The Time for Regulatory Reform in Congress. The Center’s director Neomi Rao and I have organized this event, and it should be a lot of fun. It’s free, with food, so register here. […]
It is time to rethink legal and popular notions of immigration sovereignty. In the 19th Century, the Supreme Court depicted immigration as a threat to national sovereignty. It did so to support its conclusion that the political branches (Congress and the President) had extra-constitutional power over certain aspects of immigration law. In explaining why the […]
During the 2016 election, Donald Trump became the first major Presidential candidate in recent history to withhold his tax returns, citing ongoing IRS audits. After taking office, President Trump has said that he will continue to keep his tax returns secret. He believes that only the media, and not the voters, care about them. In a recent […]
In response to a scathing report by Kaiser Health News, Senator Charles Grassley has announced an inquiry into the exorbitant prices for orphan drugs. Now seems like a good time to highlight my series, published at The Incidental Economist, on how to think straight about orphan drugs: Background on orphan drugs and the Orphan Drug […]
Anti-circumvention technologies were most probably not high on President Trump’s mind when he withdrew the United States as a signatory to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) last month. The TPP, as with a number of other multilateral and bilateral treaties to which the United States is a party, includes prohibitions on the circumvention of “effective technological […]
This guest post comes from Ian Samuel, a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. His areas of scholarly interest focus on cyberlaw, especially as it intersects with criminal law, security, and intellectual property. He has clerked for Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and for […]
Over at The Surly Subgroup blog, Leandra Lederman just wrapped up hosting a terrific mini-symposium entitled The Future of Tax Administration and Enforcement. This online symposium grew out of an in-person discussion group at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Law Schools last month. Professor Lederman has some concluding thoughts here, and my […]
My colleague Peter Shane and I are hosting the Second Annual Administrative Law New Scholarship Roundtable here at The Ohio State University on June 27-28, 2017. We just issued the call for papers (really, call for abstracts), with a deadline of March 17th. Last year’s inaugural roundtable at Michigan State was a terrific event. I’ve cross-posted […]