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I’ve frequently expressed concern that the legacy of Dodd-Frank will be to promote artificial consolidation of the banking industry by driving small banks out of business and making large banks even more “Too Big to Fail.”  This is for two reasons. The first reason would be if Dodd-Frank perpetuates the so-called TBTF subsidy.  This is the […]

Anyone out there who understands Google Analytics Frequency & Recency reports? I’m trying to figure out what ours means, and I’m just not getting some things about it; though I have read pages that purport to explain it, some things still don’t make sense. Please e-mail me at volokh at law.ucla.edu if you’d be willing […]

Clark Neily of the Institute for Justice guest-blogged here about “judicial engagement” last year, so I thought I’d note his new book, Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government. Here’s the Amazon summary (paragraph breaks added): Government at every level is too big, too powerful, and too intrusive. […]

A couple of weeks ago I posted on an exchange between George Leef and Joshua Silverstein on the wisdom of grade inflation in law school. They’ve continued the debate, most recently on the pages of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.  Josh’s column is here and George’s is here.

A few weeks ago, Above the Law had a long post celebrating this Ninth Circuit oral argument, in which the en banc panel tears apart a government lawyer attempting to defend a dubious conviction won by an assistant U.S. Attorney in San Diego. During the prosecutor’s rebuttal closing argument, he went on a long tangent […]

I’m returning to my old stomping grounds of Mississippi this week, where I spent two wonderful years last century (1996-1998). On Thursday, I will be at Mississippi College School of Law speaking on “The Financial Crisis and the Rule of Law.”  My old friend and colleague Matt Steffey will provide commentary on my remarks.  That […]

In my first post about NIST’s draft cybersecurity framework I explained its basic problem as a spur to better security:  It doesn’t actually require companies to do much to improve their network security. My second post argued that the framework’s privacy appendix, under the guise of protecting cybersecurity, actually creates a tough new privacy requirement for industry by smuggling the […]

Albert Yoon has an interesting new article, Editorial Bias in Legal Academia, on the selection of law review articles authored by professors who teach at the journal’s own school. For those familiar with law reviews, the paper just tells you what you already know. But it’s still pretty interesting, especially for current law review editors. […]

For readers who may be interested, here is an updated list of upcoming talks I will be giving about my book Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter. In most cases, these events will last about 60 to 90 minutes and are open to the public unless otherwise noted. I will announce additional […]

Following up on my earlier NIST post, it’s fair to ask why  I think the NIST Cybersecurity Framework will be a regulatory disaster. After all, as I acknowledged in that post, NIST’s standards for cybersecurity are looking far less prescriptive than business feared. There’s not a “shall” or “should” to be found in NIST’s August […]

The Federal Trade Commission is shut down. Here’s the web notice.  Even those FTC functions paid for with dedicated funds (e.g. the “Do Not Call” Registry) are down.  Yet the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau remains open, because (as reported here) it is not dependent upon Congressional appropriations.

Duke University Law School’s Steven L. Schwarcz sent me the draft of his new paper, back in September, but the semester was just getting underway, and in any case, it seemed to me then that a paper titled “Rollover Risk: Ideating a U.S. Debt Default” was referring enough to a possible world that I could […]

Business and conservatives have been worried all year about the cybersecurity standards framework that NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) is drafting. An executive order issued early this year, after cybersecurity legislation stalled on the Hill, told NIST to assemble a set of standards to address cyber risks. Once they’re adopted, the order says, other agencies will encourage private […]