This Essay examines the roles that federal administrative agencies have begun to play in response to the rise of private arbitration, particularly in the consumer and employment contexts. Such agency actions have included enforcement strategies designed to mimic the effects of private litigation when such litigation may not be possible due to the presence of arbitration agreements. And, in some cases, they have involved regulatory responses, including...
No. 4
Colleges and universities are facing mounting pressure to tackle the pervasive problem of student-perpetrated sexual misconduct. Whether these institutions lack the expertise or, less optimistically, the willpower, colleges and universities have struggled to sift through a morass of Department of Education regulations, conflicting case law, and institutional incentives in order to design disciplinary procedures that protect the rights of both complainant...
“‘Al Hill is the legal scholar’s scholar.’” Al Hill died on December 5, 2015 at the age of 98, outlasting most of his contemporaries. Al had taken senior status when I came to Columbia Law School, and I succeeded him in the course on federal courts. The little I saw of Al left […]
Alfred Hill, a great legal scholar and one of Columbia’s treasures for nearly 50 years, died in 2015 at the age of 98. The Columbia Law Review honored him on his retirement from active teaching in 1991, but Al continued to write important work even into the twenty-first century. Having joined the Faculty in 1962, […]
States abdicate many of their federal responsibilities to local governments. They do not monitor local compliance with those laws, they disclaim responsibility for the actions of their local governments, and they deny state officials the legal capacity to bring local governments into compliance. When sued for noncompliance with these federal laws, states attempt to evade responsibility by arguing that local governments—and not the state—are...
While vaccination is a hot political topic, it is largely settled as a matter of law. Ever since the Supreme Court’s 1905 decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, state governments have possessed the authority to enforce mandatory vaccination laws. Furthermore, courts have long recognized that States are not required to provide religious exemptions to these vaccination mandates, though most do. The Supreme Court recently denied certiorari in a...
Introduction A central lesson of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 was that firms behaving like banks should be regulated like banks. Nonbanks that perform the same economic function as banks—so-called “shadow banks”—create the same risks and demand the same regulatory response as depository institutions with bank charters. The principal legislative reform passed in the wake […]