In denying taxpayers’ claims for various deductions and credits offered by the tax code, courts are fond of saying that these are matters of “legislative grace.” Congress, we are told, allows a taxpayer to reduce his tax liability through sheer beneficence, and a taxpayer cannot infer a credit or deduction. Rather, his entitlement to them […]
Yesterday in a short statement respecting the denial of certiorari in Whitman v. United States, Justice Scalia — joined by Justice Thomas — raised an interesting question about whether “a court owe[s] deference to an executive agency’s interpretation of a law that contemplates both criminal and administrative enforcement.” Here are some highlights (citations omitted): I doubt the […]
The Supreme Court’s recent grant in King v. Burwell has generated a lot of heat, and varying amounts of light, among the legal commentariat. There, the Court agreed to review the 4th Circuit’s rejection of the claim that the text of the Affordable Care Act precludes subsidies for health exchanges established by the federal government, […]
The Department of Justice (“DOJ”) seeks comment on a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to amend Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (“ADA”) with respect to the exhibition of movies with closed captioning and audio description. First, this regulation would explicitly require theaters to exhibit such movies “at all times and […]
On Monday the Fordham Law Review published a symposium entitled Chevron at 30: Looking Back and Looking Forward, which my colleague Peter Shane and I organized to commemorate Chevron‘s thirtieth anniversary. I previously blogged about the Foreword we penned here, and the final version of that Foreword can be found here. To get a full introduction […]
The effect of legal representation is a topic near and dear to those who study and work in the agency adjudication context, whether that be immigration, social security, special education, tax, or veterans benefits — just to name a few. For instance, my colleague Stephanie Hoffer and I explore those issues in the tax context with respect […]
The Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate has interesting implications for the Federal Reserve. Three issues come to mind: the legislative agenda, appointments, and hearings. But predicting Republican posture in the 114th Congress is a very difficult thing: it will depend entirely on which wing of the party—the populist/Tea Party wing, or the bank-friendly/establishment wing–takes control […]
In my first AdLaw Bridge Series post, I reviewed David Pozen‘s Self-Help and the Separation of Powers, which was just published in the Yale Law Journal. As I mentioned in that post, the article’s practical (and political) implications should not be overlooked. Professor Pozen is careful to note, repeatedly, that the purpose of the paper is not to […]
Over at the Journal of Things We Like (Lots) — aka Jotwell, which I explain further here — Linda Jellum has a solid reviewof Nicholas Parrillo ‘s terrific book Against the Profit Motive: The Salary Revolution in American Government, 1780-1940 (2013). The Law and Society Association provides a great summary of the book: Against the Profit Motive traces […]
This morning the Supreme Court issued orders from its October 31st Conference. At this Conference the Court considered the cert petition in King v. Burwell, the challenge to a critical Obamacare regulation that “extend[s] tax-credit subsidies to coverage purchased through exchanges established by the federal government under Section 1332 of the Patient Protection and Affordable […]
This year marks the inaugural season of the ABA Academy’s Cybersecurity Core Curriculum. The Curriculum is a series of programs addressing the cybersecurity risks facing lawyers, best practices for prevention and incident response, and lawyers’ legal and ethical obligations to clients regarding data security. The next event in this series, “Moving Target: Cybersecurity Legal Requirements […]
Here is the October 2014 Edition of the most-downloaded recent papers (those announced in the last 60 days) from SSRN‘s U.S. Administrative Law eJournal, which is edited by William Funk. For more on why SSRN and this eJournal are such terrific resources for administrative law scholars and practitioners, check out my first post on the subject […]
At the end of September, six commercial companies were effectively granted permission to use drones to film and take photographs, unlike every other commercial drone operator, whose use of drones remains banned. The FAA, an agency tasked by Congress primarily with maintaining the safety of the public skies, is now in the business of granting commercial […]
Who owns medical records? Technically, the records themselves are the property of the physicians and hospitals that compile them. But the law has long recognized that patients also have rights to those records. Most significantly, under HIPAA’s Privacy Rule, a provider must, upon request, give a patient a copy of her medical records. But, to […]
It seems like every time a corporation announces a settlement with the government, someone expresses outrage upon learning that a corporation’s payment may be deductible. How dare the government subsidize bad behavior by allowing a corporation to reduce its taxes? Take a look at this Newsweek story, for example. The deductibility of settlement payments actually […]