By Richard L. Hasen. Full text here. With the recent personnel changes on the Supreme Court, the pendulum has swung sharply away from deference in campaign finance regulation toward perhaps the greatest period of deregulation since before Congress passed the important 1974 Amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act. In the 2006 Randall v. Sorrell decision,…

By Eugene Kontorovich. Full text here. The United States routinely apprehends foreign drug traffickers in international waters. It prosecutes many of them under the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act, which allows for jurisdiction even over foreign-flagged vessels with no demonstrable intent of bringing their cargo to the United States. This assertion of universal jurisdiction—a doctrine generally…

By Oren Bar-Gill. Full text here. In the past decade, behavioral economics has established itself as a contender to the throne of neoclassical economics in the economic analysis of law. The pros and cons of behavioral as compared to neoclassical economics have been vigorously debated at the general, methodology level. But the success or failure of…

By RonNell Andersen Jones. Full text here. For more than thirty years, proponents and opponents of a federal reporter’s shield law have debated the necessity of a privilege for members of the news media and have disagreed sharply about the frequency with which subpoenas are issued to the press. Most recently, in the wake of several…

By Pamela Samuelson. Full text here. Commentators and policymakers have frequently expressed serious concerns about the exclusionary potency of patents on communications protocols and interface designs for information and communications technologies (ICT). Among the proposed policy responses to potential harms arising from the exercise of such interface patents are excluding interfaces from patent protection, immunizing use…

By Christopher R. Leslie. Full text here. Courts and scholars have long debated the proper balance between antitrust law and intellectual property rights. Proponents of strong intellectual property rights and those of vigilant antitrust enforcement often find themselves at opposite ends of the debate. Some scholars and intellectual property owners resist the encroachment of antitrust law…

By Patrick O. Gudridge. Full text here.

By David E. Adelman & Kirsten H. Engel. Full text here. A hallmark of environmental federalism is that neither federal nor state governments limit themselves to what many legal scholars have deemed to be their appropriate domains. The federal government regulates local issues, such as remediation of contaminated industrial sites, while state and local governments develop…

By Heidi Kitrosser. Full text here.

By Miriam A. Cherry & Jarrod Wong. Full text here. In the spring of 2009, public outcry erupted over the multi-million dollar bonuses paid to AIG executives even as the company was receiving TARP funds. Various measures were proposed in response, including a ninety percent retroactive tax on the bonuses, which the media described as a “clawback.”…