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What if the Government Ordered the Human Rights Campaign to Cover Conversion...
A thought experiment: It’s late January 2016. Newt Gingrich is President. The House of Representatives is solidly Republican, and there’s a slight Republican majority in the Senate. Because...
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Religious Liberty for Dummies
According to Senators Barbara Boxer, Jeanne Shaheen, and Patty Murray, the Catholic Church is the real bully in the fight over whether religious employers must include coverage for contraception in the...
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The Magical World of Mandates
It seems President Obama has discovered a magical cure for his contraception controversy: simply force insurance companies to provide free coverage for contraceptive services, but only for women who...
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My Professor, My Judge, and the Doctrine of Judicial Review
Imagine if you picked up your morning paper to read that one of your astronomy professors had publicly questioned whether the earth, in fact, revolves around the sun. Or suppose that one of your...
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I Will be Participating Today on the Live Webcast “This Week in Law”
Today at 11AM PT I will be participating on the live webcast “This Week in Law” along with TechFreedom Senior Adjunct Fellow Larry Downes. Denise Howell will be hosting and we will also be joined by...
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More Misguided Derision from Critics of the Verizon-SpectrumCo Wireless Deal
The pending wireless spectrum deal between Verizon Wireless and a group of cable companies (the SpectrumCo deal, for short) continues to attract opprobrium from self-proclaimed consumer advocates and...
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Wise and Timely Counsel from John Taylor, F.A. Hayek, and Reagan’s Economic...
In light of yesterday’s abysmal jobs report, yesterday’s Wall Street Journal op-ed by Stanford economist John B. Taylor (Rules for America’s Road to Recovery) is a must-read. Taylor begins by...
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Leonhardt on the Age Gap
In today’s New York Times David Leonhardt has a pretty amazing article. He tells us that “polls suggest that Mitt Romney will win a landslide among the over-65 crowd and that President Obama will do...
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Broken Tax Promises
Remember this? How about this?: GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You were against the individual mandate… PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yes. STEPHANOPOULOS: …during the campaign. Under this mandate, the government is...
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Earl Warren and John Roberts
President Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren to the Supreme Court thinking that Warren was a conservative. Of course,Warren turned out to be a very liberal Justice. Eisenhower later said that...
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The Twitter campaign for the STOCK act
Professor Bainbridge is urging his readers to pressure Eric Cantor into dropping his opposition to pending legislation that would ban Congressional insider trading. But before you Twitter Cantor,...
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The Economics of Being Able to Fire People Who Provide Me Services
Via Professor Bainbridge, I read today about the nonsense surrounding Mitt Romney enjoying firing people. I’m late to the this one, but here is the quote in context for anybody who missed it: “I want...
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Macey on Anticapitalist Claptrap, Private Equity, and Politics
Jonathan Macey (Yale) defends private equity against nonsensical attacks from Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman and others (Rick Perry is spared by Macey, but not by Bainbridge) in today’s Wall Street...
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The Republican Primary
I have been following the Republican primary on Intrade, the betting market site. In the last few days, the probability Mitt Romney winning the nomination has gone down by about 10%, from about 80%...
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The Case for Copyright
Mark Schultz, law professor and specialist in copyright law, has written an excellent response to the Republican Study Committee policy brief on copyright law that has been making the rounds on the...
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Regulation Magazine Cover Article: “How the Supreme Court Doomed the ACA to...
My recent essay, How the Supreme Court Doomed the ACA to Failure, is the cover article of the current issue of Regulation Magazine. I’ve been over the essay’s basic points several times (e.g., here,...
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The SHIELD Act: When Bad Economic Studies Make Bad Laws
Earlier this month, Representatives Peter DeFazio and Jason Chaffetz picked up the gauntlet from President Obama’s comments on February 14 at a Google-sponsored Internet Q&A on Google+ that “our...
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Zeke Emanuel on the ACA’s Adverse Selection Problem and Solutions to It
Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm’s brother and former health care adviser to President Obama, acknowledges in today’s Wall Street Journal that adverse selection may prove to be a “bump in the road” in the...
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My Hip Saga and How the Affordable Care Act Squandered Our Best Opportunity...
After two years of nagging and increasingly worse hip and leg pain, I learned last August (at age forty) that I have a congenital hip deformity and need to have both hips replaced. In planning for...
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Agent McConnell and My Generation’s “Greatest Mind on Antitrust Law”
If we’ve learned anything from the pending IRS scandal, it’s that bureaucrats matter. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell apparently thinks so. According to a recent National Review article,...
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“A Line in the Sand on the Calls for New Patent Legislation,” by Wayne Sobon
Over at the blog for the Center for the Protection for Intellectual Property, Wayne Sobon, the Vice President and General Counsel of Inventergy, has posted an important essay that criticizes the slew...
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How the Employer Mandate Delay Thwarts the ACA’s Insurance Exchanges and...
Has a piece of legislation ever been subject to as much cynicism-inspiring manipulation as the Affordable Care Act? It was rammed through Congress, on a totally partisan basis, via an unprecedented...
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The .AMAZON TLD, cultural identity and competition regulation at ICANN
The ridiculousness currently emanating from ICANN and the NTIA (see these excellent posts from Milton Mueller and Eli Dourado on the issue) over .AMAZON, .PATAGONIA and other “geographic”/commercial...
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Richard Epstein Critiques Obama Administration Veto of ITC Exclusion Order in...
Over at the blog for the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property, Richard Epstein has posted a lengthy essay that critiques the Obama Administration’s decision this past August 3 to veto the...
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Appropriate humility from Verizon over corporations’ role in stopping NSA...
Like most libertarians I’m concerned about government abuse of power. Certainly the secrecy and seeming reach of the NSA’s information gathering programs is worrying. But we can’t and shouldn’t pretend...
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My Con Law Prof Flubs the Constitution…Again.
Once again, my constitutional law professor has embarrassed me with his gross misunderstanding of the U.S. Constitution. First, he insisted that it would be “unprecedented” for the U.S. Supreme Court...
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Auto Dealers Dealing Tesla MO Roadblocks
Our TOTM colleague Dan Crane has written a few posts here over the past year or so about attempts by the automobile dealers lobby (and General Motors itself) to restrict the ability of Tesla Motors to...
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Lambert and Sykuta Talk Tesla in the Kansas City Star
Mike Sykuta and I, both proud Missourians, recently took to the opinion section of the Kansas City Star to discuss pending state legislation that would bar automobile manufacturers from operating their...
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Meese and Oman Spank the Corporate Law Prof Amici in Hobby Lobby
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) subjects government-imposed burdens on religious exercise to strict scrutiny. In particular, the Act provides that “[g]overnment shall not substantially...
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Don’t wanna brag or nothin, but critics have been right about net neutrality...
Remember when net neutrality wasn’t going to involve rate regulation and it was crazy to say that it would? Or that it wouldn’t lead to regulation of edge providers? Or that it was only about the last...
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The competitive implications of the Affordable Care Act for health insurance...
Last week concluded round 3 of Congressional hearings on mergers in the healthcare provider and health insurance markets. Much like the previous rounds, the hearing saw predictable representatives, of...
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Trimming the Sails of the Administrative State
In the wake of the recent OIO decision, separation of powers issues should be at the forefront of everyone’s mind. In reaching its decision, the DC Circuit relied upon Chevron to justify its extreme...
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The Internet Association’s vision for the future looks a lot like the past
Last week, the Internet Association (“IA”) — a trade group representing some of America’s most dynamic and fastest growing tech companies, including the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and eBay —...
View ArticleAn ambitious AG, a disgruntled competitor, and the contrived antitrust case...
The populists are on the march, and as the 2018 campaign season gets rolling we’re witnessing more examples of political opportunism bolstered by economic illiteracy aimed at increasingly unpopular big...
View ArticleThe illiberal vision of neo-Brandeisian antitrust
Following is the (slightly expanded and edited) text of my remarks from the panel, Antitrust and the Tech Industry: What Is at Stake?, hosted last Thursday by CCIA. Bruce Hoffman (keynote), Bill...
View ArticleTech Expertise in Congress, Additional Thoughts
I’m of two minds on the issue of tech expertise in Congress. Yes there is good evidence that members of Congress and Congressional staff don’t have broad technical expertise. Scholars Zach Graves and...
View ArticleWe need leaders that embrace complexity, not dumb it down
In a recent NY Times opinion piece, Tim Wu, like Elizabeth Holmes, lionizes Steve Jobs. Like Jobs with the iPod and iPhone, and Holmes with the Theranos Edison machine, Wu tells us we must simplify...
View ArticleThe Snobbery of Bashing Big Tech
This guest post is by Corbin K. Barthold, Senior Litigation Counsel at Washington Legal Foundation. In the spring of 1669 a “flying coach” transported six passengers from Oxford to London in a single...
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Economics is Dead. Long Live Economics! A Review of The Economists’ Hour
John Maynard Keynes wrote in his famous General Theory that “[t]he ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly...
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Putting COVID Emergency Response on War Footing
[TOTM: The following is part of a blog series by TOTM guests and authors on the law, economics, and policy of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The entire series of posts is available here. This post is...
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There is No Cure for Government Incompetence
[TOTM: The following is part of a blog series by TOTM guests and authors on the law, economics, and policy of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The entire series of posts is available here. This post is...
View ArticleBig Tech and the Parable of the Broken Window
This guest post is by Corbin K. Barthold, Senior Litigation Counsel at Washington Legal Foundation. A boy throws a brick through a bakeshop window. He flees and is never identified. The townspeople...
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The (Conventional) 5G Chairman
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the legal and regulatory issues that arose during Ajit Pai’s tenure as chairman of the Federal Communications...
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How Chairman Pai Restored the FCC’s Independence
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the legal and regulatory issues that arose during Ajit Pai’s tenure as chairman of the Federal Communications...
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Pai Dedicated His Tenure to Improving US Broadband
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the legal and regulatory issues that arose during Ajit Pai’s tenure as chairman of the Federal Communications...
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Chairman Pai’s Legacy of Transparency
[TOTM: The following is part of a digital symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the legal and regulatory issues that arose during Ajit Pai’s tenure as chairman of the Federal Communications...
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Committee Prepares to Grill Tech CEOS, but It Is the First Amendment That...
In what has become regularly scheduled programming on Capitol Hill, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai will be subject to yet another round of...
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Alston Decision Shows Consumer Welfare Standard Isn’t Broken
From Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), populist calls to “fix” our antitrust laws and the underlying Consumer Welfare Standard have found a foothold on Capitol Hill. At the...
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Antitrust Statutorification
[TOTM: The following is part of a symposium by TOTM guests and authors marking the release of Nicolas Petit’s “Big Tech and the Digital Economy: The Moligopoly Scenario.” The entire series of posts is...
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The Klobuchar Bill’s Not-So-Bright Lines for Antitrust Scrutiny
In a recent op-ed, Robert Bork Jr. laments the Biden administration’s drive to jettison the Consumer Welfare Standard that has formed nearly half a century of antitrust jurisprudence. The move can be...
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