By Jeffrey A. Meyer. Full text here. Scores of federal criminal and civil statutes are “geoambig­uous”—they do not say whether they apply to conduct that takes place in foreign countries. This is a vital concern in an age of exploding globalization. The Supreme Court regularly cites a “presumption against extraterritoriality,” but just as often overlooks it…

By David Zaring. Full text here. Although the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in theory regulates government policymaking, the agency that is both among the oldest and, as the financial crisis has revealed, one of the most important, does not play by its rules. The Treasury Department is rarely sued for its administrative procedure, makes fewer rules than…

By Josh Chafetz. Full text here. In 1998, the conservative provocateur Ann Coulter made waves when she wrote that President Clinton should be either impeached or assassinated. Coulter was roundly—and rightly—condemned for suggesting that the murder of the president might be justified, but her conceptual linking of presidential impeachment and assassination was not entirely unfounded. Indeed,…

By J.B. Ruhl & Robert L. Fischman. Full text here. Adaptive management has become the tonic of natural resources policy. With its core idea of “learning while doing,” adaptive management has become infused into the natural resources policy world to the point of ubiquity, surfacing in everything from mundane agency permits to grand presidential proclamations. Indeed,…

By I. Glenn Cohen & Daniel L. Chen. Full text here. For those facing infertility, using assisted reproductive technology to have genetically related children is a very expensive proposition. In particular, to produce a live birth through in vitro fertilization (IVF) would cost an individual (on average) between $66,667 and $114,286 in the United States. If…

By Robert B. Ahdieh. Full text here. From the financial crisis and changing forms of musical creativity to the rise of the Internet and increasing standard-setting conflict, the challenges of modern social and economic life are increasingly defined not by the need to reconcile conflicting interests, but rather to coordinate the choices of dispersed—and diverse—individuals and…

By Michael P. Vandenbergh, Amanda R. Carrico, & Lisa Schultz Bressman. Full text here. Administrative agencies have long proceeded on the assumption that individuals respond to regulations in ways that are consistent with traditional rational-actor theory, but that is beginning to change. Agencies are now relying on behavioral economics to develop regulations that account for…

By Margaret H. Lemos. Full text here. In an effort to strengthen private enforcement of federal law, Congress regularly employs plaintiff-side attorneys’ fee shifts, damage enhancements, and other mechanisms that promote litigation. Standard economic theory predicts that these devices will increase the volume of suits by private actors, which in turn will bolster enforcement and encourage…

By Randall S. Thomas & Harwell Wells. Full text here. Americans seem convinced that corporate executives are paid too much. So far, however, attempts to rein in executive compensation have met with little success. In the Article we propose a new approach to monitoring executive compensation, one that turns to an unlikely institution to oversee pay:…

By Sarah B. Lawsky. Full text here. Tax policy and scholarship generally assume that income has declining marginal utility (that is, that the next dollar is worth less to a wealthier person than to a poorer person). This assumption provides an easy justification for redistributive taxation. But the legal literature provides no firm grounding for the…