Articles

Earlier today, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to grant review of the important property rights case, Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States. The case arises from the federal government’s “Rails-to-Trails” program, which seeks to convert old, abandoned railroad tracks into recreational trails. As nice as that program may ...

The old quip—do you want to put the folks who run the DMV in charge of your health care?—isn’t quite so funny now. Some people think that advocates of free market alternatives are just cynical or paranoid folk who exaggerate government’s minor foibles. But the real argument against having government run health care, or education, & ...

An Illinois executive order and law declares all personal home assistants to be public employees, for the sole purpose of being represented by a collective bargaining unit of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) that seeks to lobby for greater government spending (Medicaid) on home healthcare.  Several personal home attendants, represe ...

The Federalist Society published my new article on the Pebble mine today: Can the Environmental Protection Agency Stop the Pebble Mine?  The article examines EPA’s authority under the Clean Water Act, particularly whether it may “veto” a project like the Pebble mine before the project proponent applies for the necessary permits.� ...

Today, we received notice that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a favorable per curiam opinion in Howard v. A.W. Chesterton Co. on September 26.  The issue was whether a mesothelioma patient must prove that he was exposed to the defendant companies’ asbestos products with sufficient frequency, proximity, and regularity to justify imposi ...

This afternoon, we filed this brief in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of entrepreneur Maurice Underwood. He’s the Reno businessman who wants to run a moving company, but isn’t allowed to because that state forbids new businesses from opening if they would compete economically against existing moving companies. We sued the ...

Last night, I spoke at an Americans for Prosperity event on the delisting of the gray wolf and announcing the upcoming release of a documentary on the human impacts of gray wolf expansion. Here’s the trailer for the film: youtubehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH4OjvsCz1w/youtube At the same hotel, opponents of the proposal to delist the wolf ...

Economic Liberty — Right to Earn a Living We filed our opening brief in the Ninth Circuit in Underwood v. Mackay, our challenge to the Nevada laws that establish a cartel of moving companies by forbidding new moving companies if they would compete against existing companies.  As we explained in this blog post, the trial court dismissed U ...

In 2008, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.  The listing decision was controversial because it was the first time the Service had placed a thriving species on the protected list.  Although sea ice habitat had been shrinking over the past 50 years, … ...