Author Archive | Todd Zywicki

I wanted to recognize a nice story published on Christmas Day in the New York Times about my friends at the Goldwater Institute where I (and Randy) are Senior Fellows.  In addition to Clint Bolick, who is featured in the article, I want to recognize the great work of Nick Dranias, with whom I’ve done […]

I add my two cents to Forbes’s recognition of Joe Malchow and Michael Ellis in their list of 30 under 30 in the world of law and public policy (HT: Scott Johnson).  I first met both of them during my Dartmouth adventures and am not surprised to find them on the list.  Joe Asch has […]

GM’s CEO says that the average Volt buyer earns $170,000 per year (and many are switching from BMW).  And that many of those who are buying the Volt (and getting the tax subsidy) already own a Prius–so many are just switching  from one alternative fuel vehicle to another. Now all we need is a “cash […]

I did a follow-up interview with Anisha Sekar of NerdWallet on the effects of the Durbin Amendment and its political future.  You can read it here.

Some New Hampshire lawmakers want to protect their liberty-loving residents from inadvertently running afoul of Massachusetts law: Some New Hampshire lawmakers are backing a bill that would put up border signs warning drivers about to enter Massachusetts. Signs welcoming drivers to other states are common on major roads, but lawmakers said travelers on back roads […]

I have an op-ed today in Canada’s National Post co-authored with Philippe Bergevin of the C.D. Howe Institute: “Set Interac Free.”  The op-ed addresses the issue of payment card regulation and innovation in Canada.  The op-ed is based on a comment that Phil and I filed on a Canadian Task Force project, “The Way We […]

The Bill of Rights Institute has just produced a nifty new video on The Rule of Law and why it matters.  You can take a look here.  I was delighted to be invited to contribute to the video and you’ll see I pop up a couple of times. The Bill of Rights Institute, for those […]

Harvey Silverglate thinks so.

You just get your buddy the Secretary of the Treasury to give you insider information at the same time that he is telling the public something completely different. A few participants at the meeting declined to trade on the inside information.  Most of the attendees at the meeting, however, refused comment, so in the world […]

J.W. Verrett crows about the inevitability of the Solyndra debacle.

From Yeager(1974) in the Southern Economic Journal, 41(1): 96-102:  “Concern has been expressed that the burden of consumer indebtedness is becoming so excessive as to constitute a threat to the stability of the economy.”  To which he adds later, “One interpretation of the information developed thus far is that American consumers have reached a ‘saturation […]

The video of the Federalist Society Lawyers’ Convention Panel on CFPB, “Will Consumers and the Economy Benefit from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?”  is now available.  The participants on the panel were David Berenbaum, Chief Program Office of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition; Leonard Kennedy, General Counsel of the CFPB; Alex Pollock of AEI; and […]

An interesting conference coming up at GMU Law School, hosted by the Henry G. Manne Program in Law and Economic Studies at the GMU Law & Economics Center, on December 14.  Details here.  Given the swirl of antitrust issues around Google and Intel, this is a particularly timely topic.

Ted Frank at the Center for Class Action Fairness has had another important victory–obtaining a 9th Circuit reversal of a cy pres award that had been made as part of a settlement with AOL: The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Monday rejected a class action settlement that called for AOL Inc. to give $110,000 […]

My article “Economic Uncertainty, The Courts, and the Rule of Law” is now available on SSRN.  It is based on my remarks at the Federalist Society’s National Student Convention last spring at UVA.  Here’s the abstract: Abstract Should judges protect private property rights and constitutional rights as vigilantly in times of crisis as in ordinary […]