Legal News

Legal News

61 percent of IRS employees who violated tax laws got to keep their jobs, report says

The Internal Revenue Service allowed 61 percent of its employees who violated tax laws to remain on the job, according to a report by the…

Judicial “Discretion” in 1787

by Raoul Berger EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is an excerpt of the book (chapter 16) Government by Judiciary: The Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment, Foreword by Forrest McDonald (2nd ed.) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1997). A common historicist fallacy is to import our twentieth-century conceptions into the minds of the Founders. At the adoption of the Constitution the notion that judges, for example, could make law as an instrument of social change was altogether alien to colonial thinking. “Instrumentalism” was yet to come. In a valuable essay Morton J. Horwitz observed that “fear of judicial discretion had long been part of colonial political rhetoric” and described the prevalent jural conceptions that combined to circumscribe the judicial function in the eighteenth century. There was first …

Legal News

State Regulation and the Necessary and Proper Clause

The Necessary and Proper Clause in the Constitution is commonly used to justify unconstitutional federal authority, and William Baude at the University of Chicago Law School believes a stricter interpretation of the clause is in order – albeit the feds still get to decide the interpretation. In his paper “State Regulation and the Necessary and Proper Clause,” he writes that the clause should be reexamined within the context of federal and state marijuana laws to give “state regulation…a bigger role in fixing the limits of federal constitutional power.” The clause reads as follows: The Congress shall have Power … To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this …

Legal News

Side Effects of Transvaginal Mesh Have Consequences for Couples

After transvaginal mesh products began to be introduced to the pharmaceutical market, many women thought that the mesh devices would bring them comfort after suffering from intimate discomforts like pelvic organ prolapse (POP) and stress urinary incontinence (SUI). Transvaginal mesh slings or patches were created as alternatives to more invasive abdominal procedures but have so far, created painful and costly problems for tens and thousands of women. These complications can include pain, nerve damage, infection, painful sexual intercourse and recurrence of POP or SUI. Given the various negative side effects that have emerged from these products, thousands of women have already begun filing legal claims against the several manufacturers of transvaginal mesh products and man have so far won substantial claims. Although many women allege physical pain, …