congress

How Congress Could Shoot Itself in the Foot

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This post has been republished from Professor Patricia McCoy’s Substack. Her new book, “Sharing Risk: The Path to Economic Well-Being for All,” is available from The University of California Press.

Millions of American families live in an economic sweat box, with heavy financial risks but not enough money to pay for basic living needs. Chief among those risks are high medical bills, as my new book, Sharing Risk: The Path to Economic Well-Being for All discusses. In fact, health care costs so much that over half of all U.S. adults ran up debt due to medical or dental bills between 2017 and 2022. Many of them couldn’t pay for medical care otherwise. A disturbing number went bankrupt or lost their homes due to late medical bills. Others put off needed medical care to avoid running up debt.

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The House Should Act Quickly to Repeal the Illegal, Expensive E-Rate Expansion

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This guest post by BC Law Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Daniel Lyons first appeared in the AEIdeas Blog.

Earlier this month, the Senate passed S.J.Res.7. The resolution, sponsored by Senator Ted Cruz, would repeal a Biden-era Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rule allowing E-Rate funds to subsidize Wi-Fi hotspot lending programs for off-campus use. This well-intentioned but misguided rule violates clear statutory limits on agency power and threatens an increasingly unstable Universal Service Fund (USF). The House should follow the Senate’s lead to revoke this initiative before the estimated June 4 deadline for congressional action.

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So, Are We Gonna Ban TikTok, Or…?

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This guest post by BC Law Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Daniel Lyons first appeared in the AEIdeas Blog.

It has been 373 days since Congress enacted the TikTok divest-or-ban law, 105 days since the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law as constitutional, and over three months since the ban was scheduled to take effect. Yet except for a brief Inauguration Day interruption, the Chinese-controlled app has been, and remains, readily available in the United States, collecting data on 170 million Americans—data that could potentially be exploited by foreign adversaries.

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The Supreme Court Seems Unlikely to Revive Nondelegation Doctrine in FCC Case

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This guest post by BC Law Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Daniel Lyons first appeared in the AEIdeas Blog.

Earlier this month, I previewed the arguments in Federal Communications Commission v Consumers’ Research. The case asks the Supreme Court whether the FCC’s Universal Service Fund (USF) violates the nondelegation doctrine, which prohibits Congress from delegating the legislative power to executive branch agencies. As my previous post explains, nondelegation is a largely toothless doctrine, mostly dormant since 1935. But in recent years, five of the nine Supreme Court justices have expressed an interest in revitalizing the doctrine, given the right case in which to do so.

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Will FCC v. Consumers’ Research Revive the Nondelegation Doctrine?

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This guest post by BC Law Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Daniel Lyons first appeared in the AEIdeas Blog.

The idea behind the nondelegation doctrine is sound: Congress should not delegate legislative power to executive branch agencies. But its implementation leaves much to be desired. Nearly every nondelegation case acknowledges there’s a theoretical boundary but then finds that Congress hasn’t crossed it here. Only twice has the Supreme Court found a law violated the nondelegation doctrine, in 1935, both involving a statute that literally allowed President Roosevelt to cartelize the entire economy and make rules at whim. The modern rule allows Congress to give agencies significant authority as long as it includes an “intelligible principle” to guide exercise of that authority. Perhaps more than any other doctrine, this toothless standard has permitted the modern atrophy of our legislative branch, concentrated power in unelected bureaucrats, and enabled the imperial presidencies of the 21st century.

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Beyond BC: Faculty Leaders Testify Before Congress

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Our professors are shaping legislative conversation around the world. Just last month, Renee Jones, Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at BC Law, testified before the House Financial Services Committee regarding the risks of large private companies on investors, employees, consumers and society. Jones joins four (4!) other BC Law professors who have testified before the world’s highest committees in the past year.

While I remain impressed by the daily commitment our faculty shows to its students, I cannot help but add that these professors go above and beyond in showing their dedication to scholarship. Serving as leaders in their fields, the entire BC Law faculty are diligently working to educate actors and tackle pressing issues (like billion-dollar “unicorns,” donor advised funds and philanthropy, intellectual property and drug patents, broadband access, and banking regulation) well beyond the confines of the BC Law buildings–in fact, around the globe.

Pretty cool, right? You can read more about the recent testimony of Jones and BC Law Professors Olson, Lyons, McCoy and Madoff here at BC Law Magazine.