Blog
ALEC Unfairly Demonized Over “Stand Your Ground” Laws
The pro-free-market American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is under fire for its support of self-defense laws, known as "Stand Your Ground" laws. It began after…
Op-Eds
Letter to the Editor: Helping Those With Disabilities Secure Employment
James Bovard rightly criticizes the Obama administration for seeking to force many businesses to adopt hiring quotas for disabled applicants. Such quotas not only raise…
Citation
The Answer Really Isn’t Blowing in the Wind
From William Sullivan’s column in The American Thinker: In the natural world, 90 billion goes a long way. But as we’ve discovered, a…
Citation
The Times Covers ADA Filing Mills
From Overlawyered: I discuss the piece and its background in a new Cato post (& welcome Glenn Reynolds/Instapundit readers). Hans Bader and…
Blog
Ambulance Chasers Feast on Americans with Disabilities Act Claims
Thanks to generous attorney-fee provisions contained in federal civil-rights law, trial lawyers are feasting on Americans with Disabilities Act claims at the expense of…
Citation
On College Campuses, Title IX Transforms Response to Sexual Assault, But Not Without Critics
From an Associated Press article: Hans Bader, an attorney who worked at OCR under the Bush administration, says OCR’s guidelines “stack the deck…
Op-Eds
Letter to the Editor: Court Lenient on Time in Pay Discrimination
A recent story in The Washington Times grossly oversimplified a Supreme Court decision and overstated the decision’s effect on equal-pay claims (“Romney’s wooing of female…
Blog
Big Push for Costly “Comparable Worth” Legislation Coming? Lilly Ledbetter Returns to the Stage
Lilly Ledbetter, who made false claims about her pay discrimination lawsuit, has returned to the political arena, as you can see at…
Blog
San Francisco Judge Dismisses Lawsuit against McDonald’s over Happy Meals
"In San Francisco, Judge Richard Kramer has dismissed the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s lawsuit on behalf of parent Monet Parham seeking to…
Citation
Higher Education Bubble Update
From Glenn Reynolds’ post on Instapundit: HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Hans Bader: Staggering Law School…
Citation
April 11 Roundup
From Overlawyered: More on how Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) reauthorization would chip away rights of accused [Bader, Heritage,…
Citation
How Will Law Grads Repay Their Loans?
From George Leef’s post in National Review: Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute writes here about the high debt levels on average…
Blog
Staggering Law School Debts Will Lead to Exploding Debt Disaster for Graduates and Taxpayers
Federal financial aid policies have encouraged law students to borrow increasing amounts to attend law school, despite the glut of lawyers (oddly, government…
Blog
Grow Economy by Cutting Law School Subsidies
The economy remains slow, recovering from the recession at an unusually low rate, partly due to economically-harmful Obama administration policies. "U.S. stocks fell, dragging…
Citation
The Ugly Truth About Law Schools
From George Leef’s post in National Review Online: Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute blows the whistle on…
Blog
Obama Administration Wrongdoing: One Scandal Uncovered, But Others Hidden Because Inspector General Slots Left Vacant?
Via The Washington Post: The chief of the General Services Administration resigned, two of her top deputies were fired and four…
Blog
What Left-Wing Law Professors Really Think About You, and the Role of Lawyers
You're just a lab rat to be socially re-engineered by activist judges and lawyers -- who think they know how to run your life better…
Blog
Economic “Recovery” Is Slow and Weak Due to Obama Administration Policies
Typically, after the economy suffers an unusually severe recession, it bounces back in an unusually rapid recovery -- what some economists and others refer to…
Blog
Obama Budget Rejected by House in 414-0 Vote
Blog
Obamacare Harms State Finances, Imposes Unfunded Mandates, Drives Up State Budget Deficits; Even Democrats Criticize Provisions
While public attention has focused on Obamacare's unconstitutional "individual mandate," challenged yesterday in oral arguments at the Supreme Court, other parts of the health…
Blog
Supreme Court Begins Hearing Challenges to Unconstitutional Obamacare Provisions
At CNN, George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin explains why Obamacare's requirement that individuals buy health insurance is beyond Congress's power…
Blog
Troubling Provisions Being Added to the Violence Against Women Act: Due Process Rights Threatened
Provisions are being added to the 1994 Violence Against Women Act that could undermine due process on campus and in criminal cases, as civil liberties…
Citation
A Small Victory Against the EPA
From Issac Gorodetski’s post on Point of Law: Hans Bader, senior attorney and counsel for special projects with the Competitive Enterprise Institute,…
Citation
March 23 Roundup
From Walter Olsen’s post on Overlawyered: Just what European business needs: gender quotas for corporate boards [Bader, CEI]…
Citation
HHS Deems Rate Hikes Excessive in Nine States
From Michael P. Tremoglie’s article on Legal Newsline: But the issue of the government telling insurers how much premiums should be is a…
Blog
Supreme Court Affirms Right to Challenge Government Power Grabs in Sackett v. EPA; Justice Alito Cites CEI Amicus Brief
Rejecting the arguments of the Obama administration, the Supreme Court has just held that EPA "compliance orders" can be challenged in court if they…
Citation
Score One For Freedom, One Against EPA
From Paul Mulshine’s post in The Star Ledger Blogs: You can get a good summation here on the Competitive Enterprise Institute blog.
Cornell University Law School
Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency
From Justice Samuel Alito's concurring opinion in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency: Far from providing clarity and predictability, the agency’s latest informal guidance…
Blog
National Debt Skyrockets Under Obama, Far Faster Than Under Bush
CBS News finally reports the obvious: the national debt increased more in President Obama’s first three years in office than in the entire eight years of…
Cornell University Law School
Bell’s Critical Race Theory Promoted in Public Schools
From Kyle Olson’s post on BigGovernment: A radical organization known as the Pacific Educational Group (PEG) is actively promoting Derrick Bell’s Critical Race…
Cornell University Law School
March 20 Roundup
From Walter Olson’s post on Overlawyered: “Lawyer Who Spotted Broker Fraud Rewarded With SEC Ordeal” [Business Week via Bader]…
Blog
Hate Crimes Conviction in Tyler Clementi Case, Which Fueled Anti-Bullying Panic and Assault on Free Speech
A New Jersey jury has convicted Dharun Ravi of hate crimes in the Tyler Clementi case, which created a furor over bullying that led…
Cornell University Law School
Bader on the Theodore Urban Case
From Ted Frank’s post on Point of Law: Hans Bader discusses the seemingly incoherent approach of the Department of Justice to prosecuting financial…
Cornell University Law School
What’s Wrong With the Violence Against Women Act
From Wendy Kaminer’s article in The Atlantic: Will Creeley of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) points out that “prompt and…
Blog
Obama Reveals His Own Ignorance of American and World History While Denouncing Others’ Alleged Ignorance
Cornell University Law School
Letter to the Editor: New Regulations Will Force Hotels to Close Pools
Conn Carroll was right to criticize the Obama administration for potentially forcing thousands of hotel swimming pools to close through its onerous re-interpretation of the…
Blog
Government Persecutes the Innocent, Turns Blind Eye to the Guilty, Rewards Corrupt Business Models
The federal government spent years persecuting a company lawyer who dutifully uncovered and disclosed wrongdoing by a company employee, as I discuss below. But…
Cornell University Law School
Student Loans: America’s Next Debt Bomb
From Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit: HANS BADER: Student Loans: America’s Next Debt Bomb?…
Blog
Obamacare Costs More Than Twice As Much As Obama Claimed; Stimulus Creates Debt, Not Jobs
As Daniel Foster notes, “When it was being debated, Democrats told you ACA [Obamacare] would cost $940 billion over ten years . . .
Blog
Student Loans: America’s Next Debt Bomb
I understated things earlier when I wrote that the student loan bubble “may” explode in taxpayers’ faces, as law professor Glenn Reynolds pointed…
Cornell University Law School
March 13 Roundup: Boom-Era Property Speculators to Get Foreclosure Aid
From Walter Olsen’s post on Overlawyered: “Are Courts Dragging Out the Housing Crisis?” [Mark Calabria, Cato] “Boom-Era Property Speculators to Get Foreclosure…
Cornell University Law School
Economic Rebound in Doubt as 10 Percent of All US Workers Employed Just ‘Part-Time’
From Gene J. Koprowski’s article in The Daily Caller: “The ‘recovery’ is weak and may sputter,” Hans Bader, a scholar and economics expert…
Cornell University Law School
Higher Education Bubble May Explode in Taxpayers’ Faces
From Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit: HANS BADER: Higher Education Bubble May Explode in Taxpayers’ Faces. May?…
Blog
Higher Education Bubble May Explode in Taxpayers’ Faces
"61 percent of folks with a student loan are not paying," notes Andrew Gillen, Ph.D., of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. Many…
Blog
New IRS Rule Would Benefit Foreign Dictators, Drive $87 Billion Out of U.S. Economy, Could Cause Bank Failures
A new IRS rule would benefit foreign dictators and drive $87 billion out of U.S. economy, as my colleague, Iain Murray, explains in The…
Blog
Millionaire Collects Food Stamps; Food Stamps Cover Far More Than the Cost of Food
A millionaire in Michigan is collecting food stamps after winning the lottery. “Amanda Clayton, a 24-year-old from Lincoln Park, Michigan . . .
Blog
Bloomberg News: “Boom-Era Property Speculators to Get Foreclosure Aid”
"The Obama administration will extend mortgage assistance . . . to investors who bought multiple homes before the market imploded, helping some speculators who drove…
Cornell University Law School
EU’s Proposed Gender Quotas For Corporate Boards
From Isaac Gorodetski’s post on Point of Law: In recent commentary, senior attorney and counsel for special projects with the Competitive Enterprise Institute,…
Blog
European Union Pushes Discriminatory Gender Quotas for Corporate Boards
The European Union (EU) could not keep member states like Greece from cheating on EU budget rules, resulting in Greece's fiscal collapse and the current…
Legal Brief
Bulldog Investors v. Massachusetts
Full Document Available in PDF Under the regulation at issue here, journalists, academics, students and others who are not wealthy or financially…
Blog
Obama Administration Seeks Quotas Based on Disability, Race, and Perhaps Sexual Orientation
The Obama administration is pushing quotas in the workplace and higher education, seeking to force businesses that have federal contracts to hire at least…
Legal Brief
Brief in Coalition for Responsible Regulation et al v. Environmental Protection Agency
Full Document Available in PDF Introduction The suite of rules challenged in these coordinated cases involves what is assuredly the most burdensome,…
Blog
America Now Has Bigger Welfare State Than Canada, Italy, Denmark, and Austria
America now has a bigger welfare state than most countries, effectively doling out more welfare than Canada, Denmark, Austria, and Italy. As the New York…
Cornell University Law School
An Unintended Consequence
From George Leef’s post on the National Review Online: Thanks to the college-for-everyone mania, we have a shortage of workers capable for doing…
Cornell University Law School
Bennett Hypothesis 2.0
From George Leef’s post on National Review Online: On Minding the Campus today, Peter Wood, Rich Vedder, Hans Bader, Herbert London, and I…
Blog
Severe Shortage of Skilled Factory Workers As Government Encourages Students to Pursue White-Collar Jobs
The government has encouraged people who once would have become skilled and valuable factory workers to instead go to college and work in white-collar jobs, contributing…
Blog
Taxmageddon Comes Just After the Election
On December 31, shortly after the November election, tax rates will rise across the board in what congressional aides call "Taxmageddon," notes The Washington Post. Not…
Blog
Government-Funded Job Training “Might Not Work”: Washington Post
Even a liberal Washington Post writer admits that taxpayer-subsidized job training “might not work,” despite its popularity with politicians, and President Obama’s desire to spend billions more…
Cornell University Law School
February 17 Roundup
From Walter Olsen’s Overlawyered post: – Mortgage robo-signing settlement not actually as punitive toward the banks as you might think, succeeds in sticking…
Cornell University Law School
Birth Control Mandate ‘Misconceptions’
From Chris Woodward and Charlie Butts’ column on OneNewsNow: An attorney is clearing up what he calls “misconceptions” about the Obama administration’s mandate…
Blog
High Unemployment Masked by Exploding Disability Claims that Lead to Permanently-Higher Government Spending
The official unemployment rate is going down, but that's partly because many long-term unemployed people went onto Social Security Disability, citing ailments such as depression. …
Cornell University Law School
Letter to the Editor: Obama’s Contraception Compromise Doesn’t Quell Debate
Rachel Maddow [“The Republican war on contraception,” op-ed, Feb. 12] is mistaken when she defends the Obama administration’s recent rule requiring Catholic hospitals and…
Blog
Maryland Weighs Discriminatory College Child Support Mandate
Married parents have no obligation to support their adult children, much less pay for their college education. But many Maryland legislators would like to force divorced…
Blog
Misconceptions about the Obama Administration’s Contraception Mandate for Religious Employers
There are a number of misconceptions about the Obama administration’s recent rule requiring employers’ health insurance policies (including those of religious schools and hospitals) to…
Blog
Government Thwarts Cancer Cures and Production of Life-Saving Drugs
The federal government thwarted a promising cancer treatment. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) put Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski on trial twice, saying “it did…
Blog
$26 Billion Mortgage Settlement Rips Off Investors to Trim Banks’ Massive Costs of Bailing Out Deadbeat Borrowers
The $26 billion mortgage settlement announced yesterday is bad news for “bond investors including pension funds, according to Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Scott Simon,”…
Blog
Time to Pay Your Neighbor’s Mortgage, Again
The Justice Department, state attorneys general, and the biggest banks have reached an agreement to provide at least $26 billion to delinquent mortgage borrowers and…
Blog
Massive Anti-Bullying Law and Bullying Initiatives Were Based on Misleading Publicity
"It launched a hundred 'anti-bullying' initiatives at all levels of government, but much of what you think you know about" the Tyler Clementi case "is…
Cornell University Law School
Tyler Clementi Suicide Case
Blog
Even Liberal Reporters Sour on Stimulus-Funded California Rail Boondoggle
Even reporters at the famously-liberal Los Angeles Times have soured on California’s $100 billion-plus rail boondoggle, whose cost will far outstrip whatever the state will…
Cornell University Law School
Letter to the Editor: Constitutional Limits
Edd Doerr made bizarre claims in defending the Obama administration’s unjustified rule forcing Catholic hospitals and colleges to pay for contraception and abortifacients starting in…
Cornell University Law School
Employment Law Roundup: Retaliation Charges Pose Growing Threat to Free Speech
Blog
Liberal Tax Fantasies Punctured
Some liberals have the unrealistic fantasy that by increasing taxes on the top one percent of the population, the government can finance a radically…
Blog
Liberal Justices Complain About American Law Being Too Protective of Civil Liberties and Colorblindness
Recently retired Justice John Paul Stevens, who became the leader of the Supreme Court's liberal bloc in his later years on the Court, complained recently…
Cornell University Law School
Retired Justice Stevens Favors Some Discrimination
Blog
Retaliation Charges Pose Growing Threat to Free Speech
Keeping quiet can seal your fate if you are a professor facing a campus kangaroo court after being wrongly accused of racial or sexual “harassment" based on your…
Blog
More Criticism for Obama State of the Union Proposal on Schools
Syndicated columnist Steve Chapman is criticizing President Obama's proposal in the State of the Union address to require students to attend high school…
Blog
12 More Law Schools Sued for Defrauding Their Students; Many More Class-Action Lawsuits Expected
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that a team of eight law firms have just “sued a dozen more law schools across the country,…
Blog
States Deliberately Qualify Non-Poor People for Food Stamps to Get Federal Money; Obama Administration Blocks Reforms
Blog
Justice Kagan Should Recuse Herself from Obamacare Case
Only in Bizarro World can you claim someone is your attorney -- and thus shielded by attorney work-product privilege -- and then insist in the…
Blog
Americans Now Owe $189,000 Each in National Debt and Unfunded Entitlements
Cornell University Law School
Daily Scoreboard
Blog
Romney Pays More Taxes Than He Would in Canada and Many European Countries
As an article in the Financial Post noted, if Mitt Romney were Canadian, he'd pay less tax than he does in America. That’s because most of…
Blog
More Bailouts for Speculators and Delinquent Mortgage Borrowers from Obama Administration; More Taxpayer Money for Certain Banks
In his State of the Union address, President Obama, a consistent supporter of bailouts and crony capitalism, hypocritically railed against them, proclaiming, “no…
Blog
Obama Fosters the Skyrocketing Tuition He Criticized in His State of the Union Address
In his State of the Union address, President Obama decried skyrocketing college tuition, attempting to take advantage of public anger over the steadily-worsening…
Blog
Enr1 Goes Belly Up; Yet Another Solyndra
"After spending $55 million of a $118.5 million grant from" the U.S. "Department of Energy, Ener1, an Indianapolis-based maker of batteries," has just "declared…
Cornell University Law School
Gingrich, Romney Push High Tech Job Creation as U.S. Lead Slips
Cornell University Law School
Letter to the Editor: Dodd-Frank Shields Fannie and Freddie
G. William Beale noted in his Commentary column, “Big regulations stifle small banks,” that small banks are being crushed by pointless red tape due to…
Blog
Obama State of the Union Proposal Could Increase Mortgage Costs, Shrink America’s 401(K)s
AEI's James Pethokoukis says that the mass-refinancing plan proposed by President Obama in his State of the Union address would "result in higher financing…
Blog
Obama SOTU Proposal Could Increase School Violence and Disorder and Harm Parents, Students, and Teachers
Many soundbites sound good, but have very harmful consequences in the real world. That's the case for President Obama's proposal in his State of the…
Blog
Obama’s False Claims about Outsourcing and Corporate Taxes in the State of the Union Address
President Obama has spent billions of dollars in taxpayer money on subsidizing foreign firms through his failed "green energy" programs, so it was…
Cornell University Law School
Obama Proposal: No Leaving School Until Age 18 or Graduation
Cornell University Law School
How Barack Obama Used Taxpayer Dollars to Outsource Green Energy Jobs
Blog
Obama’s State of the Union Address: More Failed Jobs Proposals?
My take on President Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address is at this link. It discusses one of the jobs…
Blog
Stimulus was Designed to Provide Pork and Payoffs, Not to Revive the Economy
Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron argued that the $800 billion stimulus package wasn't even designed to stimulate the economy, but rather to benefit…
Cornell University Law School
MetLife Fires 4,300 Citing Uncertainty and Overregulation
Blog
Law Schools Teach Junk, Exaggerate Their Students’ Job Prospects
Propped up by government subsidies and regulations requiring students to attend law school before taking the bar exam, law schools waste their students' time teaching…
Cornell University Law School
Letter to the Editor: Graduate Law Schools, Lawyers, and the Public Interest
As a lawyer, I could not agree more with John O. McGinnis and Russell D. Mangas’s “First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All the…
Blog
Doctors Grow Disenchanted With Obamacare’s Costs and Burdens; Health Care Law Arbitrarily Discriminates
69% of physicians are “pessimistic about the future of medicine” because of the 2010 healthcare law, notes Dr. Marc Siegel in USA Today. “Just…
Blog
Dodd-Frank Claims 4,300 More Jobs, Reduces Consumer Choice in Mortgage Market
The Dodd-Frank law passed in 2010 in the name of “financial reform” has wiped out another 4,300 jobs: MetLife is closing down its growing…