Business & Entrepreneurship

“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.

“Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion on the Affordable Care Act mostly conforms with the way I previously understood the taxing power of the federal government,” says Adam Rosenzweig, JD, tax law expert and associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. Rosenzweig says that there were two important pieces of the Roberts opinion from a tax standpoint.

WUSTL employees interested in going back to school are invited to attend a joint information session for graduate evening programs at Olin Business School and the Henry Edwin Sever Institute. Free and open to all employees, the event is at 6 p.m. Thursday, July 12, in the Danforth University Center, Room 276.

Leading privacy law experts from around the world will gather in Cambridge, England, on June 26 and 27 for the first International Privacy Law conference, a joint effort between Washington University in St. Louis School of law and the University of Cambridge. “Every modern society is confronting novel issues of privacy, and our conference brings together some of the smartest thinkers about privacy in the world to compare notes and come up with new solutions,” says Neil M. Richards, JD, conference co-chair and professor of law at Washington University. Conference topics will include intellectual privacy, the conflict between privacy and free speech, the psychology of privacy, public access to court records, and privacy reform in Australia.

Gregory P. Magarian, JD, professor of law, and Timothy D. McBride, PhD, professor of public health, both at Washington University in St. Louis, are available for expert commentary on the Supreme Court’s Affordable Care Act decision.

Ideas are all around us — helping solve problems, develop new products, and make important decisions. Good ideas are rarely created in a vacuum, however. They often emerge when people refine their ideas in response to suggestions and comments received from colleagues.Having strong bonds to an idea can make that necessary collaboration challenging, finds new research from Washington University in St. Louis. The study suggests that psychological ownership — the extent to which people feel as though an object, or idea, is truly theirs— may be at the root of this phenomenon.

With the ballot nearly set for the November election, Mitt Romney looks to become the first Mormon to secure a presidential nomination for a major party. His membership in the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints assures that religion — and the separation of church and state — will play a significant role in this presidential election, says Gregory P. Magarian, JD, free speech and election law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “In general, I think it’s appropriate to consider a candidate’s religion as a part of their persona, but the candidate should get a lot of leeway in setting the terms of their religion’s role in political debate,” he says.

The economic model of law schools is broken, says Brian Z. Tamanaha, JD, JSD, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis and author of the new book, Failing Law Schools, published by the University of Chicago Press. “The best example to demonstrate this is that in 2010, the average debt of law students was $100,000 and the median salary was $63,000 — so a person who obtains the median salary cannot make the monthly payments on the average debt,” he says. “This involves thousands of law students. For the majority of law students, the cost of obtaining a law degree and the economic return on a law degree are out of whack.”

The Washington University in St. Louis-Fudan University Executive MBA program, ranked second in mainland China by the Financial Times, will celebrate its 10th anniversary May 25. Established in 2002 at Olin Business School, the program was among the first U.S.-China joint MBA degree programs.