A Lawyer Comes Up Short on Obama on the U.S. Supreme Court

As president, Thomas Jefferson campaigned against the U.S. Supreme Court in the pivotal 1800 election after the court let the Alien and Sedition Acts stand. The law criminalized criticizing government officials of the U.S. Government. Lincoln announced during his 1860 campaign that he would not enforce the court’s Dred Scott decision upholding slavery in U.S. territories. In saying that invalidating the Affordable Healthcare Act would represent an unprecedented act of judicial activism, Obama was not going nearly that far. In other words, he was not saying he would ignore the decision. Nor did Obama announce anything like Roosevelt’s unsuccessful court-packing scheme.

The full essay is at "Obama on the U.S. Supreme Court."

Wen and Obama: Breaking Up the Banks

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told a radio audience on April 3, 2012 “that China’s state-controlled banks are a ‘monopoly’ that must be broken up.”[1] He also urged other businesses to get into the financial sector. “Let me be frank,” he said. “Our banks earn profit too easily. Why? Because a small number of large banks have a monopoly. To break the monopoly, we must allow private capital to flow into the financial sector.”[2] This included raising the total amount foreigners can bring into China under the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor program to $80 billion.

The full essay is at "Wen and Obama: Breaking Up the Banks."

1. Dinny McMahon, Lingling Wei, and Andrew Galbraith, “Chinese Premier Blasts Banks,” The Wall Street Journal, April 4, 2012.

2. Ibid.

Tyco’s Kozlowski: Isolation or Work-Release?

L. Dennis Kozlowski, a former CEO of Tyco, was denied parole “due to concern for the public safety and welfare,” according to the New York Department of Corrections.[1] A parole board ruled that releasing him in 2012 would have the effect of minimizing his corporate crimes and affect public safety. The board concluded that early release would “not be compatible with the welfare of society at large, and would tend to deprecate the seriousness” of his offenses.[2] He was convicted in 2005 of looting nearly $600 million in bonuses and other payments from Tyco in the 1990s.

The full essay is at "Tyco's Kozlowski."

1. Chris Dolmetsch, “Former Tyco Chief Kozlowski Is Denied Parole in New York,” Bloomberg, April 5, 2012; Kevin McCoy, “Former Tyco Chief Told No on Parole,” USA Today, April 6, 2012.

2. Ibid.

Experts on the Supreme Court: Lawyers Who Teach

For all the American lawyers and law “professors” who had been predicting on the basis of their "expertise" that the three days of oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court meant that the Affordable Healthcare Act would go down, the Court's decision must have been a rude awakening. Immediately after the ruling, the decision came "as something of a surprise after the generally hostile reception the law received during the six hours of oral arguments."[1] This is an understatement at the very least.

The full essay is at "Experts on the Supreme Court."

 1. Mike Sacks, "Supreme Court Health Care Decision: Individual Mandate Survives," The Huffington Post, June 28, 2012.

A Myanmar Spring?

The party of dissident leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the National League for Democracy, won a decisive victory in by-elections on April 1, 2012. The party 40 of the 45 seats reported as of April 3^rd, with the results of five more seats not yet in. The news of the victory reached the outside world, which reacted with optimism. Catherine Ashton, the E.U.’s foreign minister, said “I congratulate the government and people of Myanmar on the conduct of the by-elections.”[1] Meanwhile, the White House indicated that the vote marked “an important step in Burma’s democratic transformation.”[2] Both the E.U. and U.S. approached the outcome as necessary but not sufficient for democracy in the country that had had five decades of harsh military rule.

The full essay is at "A Myanmar Spring."

1. Patrick Barta, “Suu Kyi’s Victory Leads to Rethink About Sanctions,” The Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2012.
2. Ibid.

The E.U. Bailout Fund: The IMF of Europe?

One of the benefits of being in a federation—as distinct from an international organization—is that states in fiscal trouble can benefit from redistribution through a federal center. In other words, federalism provides a safety buffer that is lacking at the international level. E.U. finance ministers agreed on March 30, 2012 to create a permanent bailout fund for states that have adopted the euro. The New York Times reports that questions persisted “about whether the fund, even at about $1 trillion, will be sufficient to deal with crises” in large states like Spain and Italy, which are comparable to Illinois and California in the U.S.[1] Mudding the water, the Times incorrectly refers to the bailout fund as the E.U.’s IMF: “(T)he “bailout mechanism . . .  is meant to be a European equivalent of the I.M.F.”[2] However, the term “bailout fund” itself comes from the TARP, which was not the U.S.’s IMF.

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

1. James Kanter, “Europe Agrees to Bailout Fund for Euro of Over $1 Trillion,” The New York Times, March 30, 2012. 

2. Ibid.