Articles

The California Coastal Act of 1976 created a new state agency, the California Coastal Commission, and granted it tremendous authority over development along California’s coastline. But the act also gave local governments a powerful tool to gain back some control — local governments are allowed to submit a local coastal program to the commis ...

A recent scandal involving influential government officials has rocked Illinois. The Chicago Tribune reports that several lawsuits have spawned from a corrupt scheme between government officials and an electric utility in Illinois. The utility company was charged with attempting to influence legislation by making payments to associates of House Spe ...

On June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in the case of Loving v. Virginia, which ruled unanimously that state laws prohibiting interracial marriage violated the promise of equal protection before the law. That case became a famous touchstone of civil rights law, and was even the subject of a major … ...

In the ever-changing landscape of the pandemic, one constant theme is government overreach. Since the early failure to control the outbreak, government executives have overcompensated by taking a risk-averse, iron fist approach, rather than looking for ways to mitigate or temper regulations to minimize the economic hardship that also kills. In Marc ...

Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. in March, state governors have imposed restrictions that would have been unthinkable at this time last year. These drastic actions have left many wondering about the limits of government officials’ power—and whether that power changes during times like these. The simple answer is that—there’s ...

Eviction bans have become one of the staple responses to the pandemic by governments across the country. Almost every state and many local governments have passed at least some sort of moratorium on evictions since the pandemic began. In early September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) adopted a nationwide eviction ban for  ...

Kelly Lyles is a member of a dying breed: the mom-and-pop Seattle landlord. Her kind has become the target of an increasingly radical city council that has slammed the rental housing industry with a barrage of new-fangled policies over the last five years that protect tenants at all costs, including the cost of landlord property … ...

Updated on January 11, 2021 With the spread of COVID-19 pushing hospitals to full or near-full capacity in Florida, New York, Washington, and elsewhere, numerous states are reevaluating one policy that is meant to prevent the growth of health care services and facilities. Certificate of Need (CON) laws currently exist in 38 states across the ̷ ...

In recent years, Americans are paying renewed attention and having new discussions on race, racism, and discrimination. Some of those discussions have been positive and constructive, but some have been divisive and political. One of the more academic and historical aspects of that discussion has come from a project by The New York Times called  ...