The Federal Reserve, Treasury, and Congress are working furiously to address the financial, fiscal, and macroeconomic consequences of the coronavirus crisis of 2020. We will debate the appropriate lines between monetary, fiscal, and emergency financial policy in the months and years ahead, but right now it is very important to have as much clarity […]
Don’t let the title deceive you: this is not simply a book about international intellectual property law (though it is obviously at least that). Sam’s rich account of the asymmetries in international intellectual property protections and the ways that poorer countries fight back bears on a cross-disciplinary conversation in institutional change that is worth highlighting, […]
In the summer of 2016, I wrote in Fortune that then-candidate Trump was “the single-biggest challenge to [Fed independence] in recent memory,” and that his challenge was transparent: “this wolf comes as a wolf,” I wrote, invoking Justice Scalia. The reason is simple: Trump cannot abide separate centers of power, and he relishes tearing down […]
I almost never read the comments on these posts–that’s rule number 1 for anyone active in internet life–but saw an alert to approve/disapprove a comment on my last post. It was from an anonymous litigator in the 9th Circuit, but it’s very good and worthy of considering what we do when we fetishize and worship […]
Agency independence is a funny thing. Its existential legitimacy is the subject of a searing debate. The Harvard Law Review solicited an essay from Gillian Metzger that dives into the nature of administrative separation and independence (including with a reply essay from our own Aaron Nielson). And the en banc DC Circuit is currently reviewing […]
The Kozinski drama has been a tragic one on so many levels. Most importantly, if what is alleged is true–and given the nature of the reporting, I’ve seen no reason to doubt it–one of the most prominent judges in the United States has waged a multi-decade campaign of corrosive sexual harassment and assault on clerks, […]
Although our active blogging on the CFPB debacle now makes last week seem like ancient history, we had a historic occasion to host Judge Stephen F. Williams as a guest blogger. (Here is my introduction; here is Sam Halabi’s review of Judge Williams’s book; and his posts are here, here, and here.) I hope our […]
The following post comes from guest blogger Stephen F. Williams, a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit Studying Maklakov’s efforts on behalf of the rule of law inevitably reminded me of issues relating to the rule of law in the United States today. I’ll quote a couple of remarks about […]
The following post is from guest blogger Stephen F. Williams, a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. Yesterday I posted a brief discussion of Maklakov’s failure to seek solutions to the “ad law” problems of the Stolypin land reforms: administration by officials of the ministry of internal affairs who were […]
The following post is from guest blogger Stephen F. Williams, a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. My thanks to Professor Halabi for his thoughtful and discerning review. I can only hope that reviews published in the wider world will share those qualities. But as a purpose of the blog […]
I’m very pleased to introduce a series of posts this week on the fascinating new book, The Reformer: How One Liberal Fought to Preempt the Russian Revolution, by Stephen F. Williams. Regular readers might wonder why a blog on regulation and administrative law would spend a week on a book about Vasily Maklakov, a somewhat […]
With the news that President Trump decided to break decades of tradition in failing to reappoint Janet Yellen, the question now turns to Yellen’s post-Chair fate. Quirks in the governance of the Federal Reserve I’ll describe in a moment mean that her options aren’t just about retirement: although unusual, Yellen could stay at the Fed […]
Today, the President is likely to announce Jerome Powell as his pick for Fed Chair. It’s a move that had been telegraphed for the last few days and followed an unusually extended vetting period. The comparisons between President Trump’s personnel processes and Donald Trump’s reality television showmanship are easy to make and just as easy […]
President Trump and the Senate got within a few days of having four vacancies on the Fed’s Board of Governors, an ignominious milestone that has never occurred in the Fed’s history. I wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal that these vacancies–whether we have four or three or two–are deeply problematic for the Fed. First, […]
Our readers may be interested in this call for papers, with an October 31, 2017 deadline. The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania will host the second annual Wharton Financial Regulation Conference, sponsored by the Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research and the Wharton Financial Institutions Center, on April 19-20, 2018. We issue a […]