Business & Entrepreneurship

Karen Tokarz, JD, dispute resolution expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, says that criticisms about foreclosure mediation programs – currently under review across the country – are not supported by research and appear to be based on misunderstandings of the process.

First amendment expert John Inazu, JD, associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, argues in a USA Today opinion column that evangelicals are wise to join the legal fight over the Department of Health and Human Services’ contraception mandate.

In recent decades, the federal government has relied more and more on contractors, private businesses, to perform public services. The federal government issues more than $260 billion in government contracts each year, with few restrictions on the employees of those contractors. Government ethics expert Kathleen Clark, JD, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, has written extensively about this issue, provides some suggestions in a Q&A.

The federal government is in the process of revising the regulations that govern most human subject research in the United States. In a “Policy Forum” piece in the Aug. 3 issue of Science, bioethics expert Rebecca Dresser, JD, the Daniel Noyes Kirby Professor of Law and professor of ethics in medicine, weighs in with recommendations for changes in the oversight process.

This summer, Ronald Levin, JD, the William R. Orthwein Distinguished Professor of Law, testified before the House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Courts, Commercial and Administrative Law regarding the “retrospective review” process for federal agency rules.

The budget for issuing and enforcing federal regulation is expected to decline in the 2013 fiscal year, finds a new report from Washington University in St. Louis and George Washington University.

The survival of the Affordable Care Act in the Supreme Court presents a monumental moment to improve the U.S. health care system, says Elizabeth Sepper, JD, health law expert and associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “It is a uniquely American crisis that 50 million Americans don’t have health insurance and another 29 million are underinsured, meaning getting sick would ruin them financially even though they’ve been paying for insurance,” she says.

News reports indicate that Rep. Darrell Issa (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, dropped confidential information from a Justice Department wiretap application into the Congressional Record last week. “While the executive branch sometimes seeks civil or criminal penalties against those who reveal confidential information, it cannot seek such penalties against Issa because the speech or debate clause of the constitution protects members of Congress when they expose sensitive information in the Congressional Record,” says Kathleen Clark, JD, government ethics expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.

“I expected the Court to uphold the Affordable Care Act (ACA), however, two elements of this decision are very surprising: the fact that the mandate survives under the taxing power while failing under the Commerce Clause and Necessary and Proper Clause, and the fact that Chief Justice Roberts was in the majority without Justice Kennedy,” says Gregory Magarian, JD, constitutional law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “Roberts’ vote looks to me, as a first impression, like a brilliant piece of judicial strategizing.” Magarian is a former U.S. Supreme Court clerk 
for Justice John Paul Stevens.

The Supreme Court’s decision today means the implementation of the Affordable Care Act can go forward, thus improving the delivery and affordability of medical care, says Timothy McBride, PhD, health economist and associate dean for public health at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.