Articles

This week, the Arizona Court of Appeals closed the loop on the state's recent legislative mandate for de novo review of agency decisions, officially ending substantial-evidence deference to agency-found facts. In doing so, the court followed Pacific Legal Foundation's constitutional avoidance argument presented in our amicus brief and noted that bo ...

A shocking eminent domain scandal is unfolding in Johnston, Rhode Island: Last week, the Town secretly took possession of a family's 31-acre property, only notifying the owners afterward in a letter demanding they "remove all vehicles and other personal belongings from the property immediately" or they'd be served with a no trespass notice. "I w ...

"She's a big problem" blared a tweet featuring a photograph of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Given the opposition she faced from Democratic senators and the broader left during her confirmation hearings in 2020, one might suspect that the post came from a progressive critic. But the post, which has been liked more than 117,000 times, w ...

The COVID-19 pandemic happened "gradually and then suddenly," to steal from Hemingway. In early 2020, the U.S. Commerce Secretary optimistically predicted that the coronavirus outbreak in China would "help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America." New York City's health commissioner encouraged New Yorkers "to go about their everyday lives ...

DOGE has grand plans to shrink bureaucracy, but the ride has been bumpy. Those bumps include court decisions that have slowed the president's efforts to cut government waste. But frustrated DOGE fans should not forget that courts play a vital role in achieving DOGE's goal of limited government. For now, there is no love lost between DOGE and som ...

On March 24, the Supreme Court will hear a case that, while technically about immigration, could affect every American's ability to challenge government overreach. At stake is whether people have a fair chance to challenge government decisions in court, or if procedural traps can block them from doing so. In Riley v. Garland, Pierre Riley is see ...

"I didn't vote for Elon Musk." This complaint became a common refrain in recent weeks for those alarmed by Musk and DOGE's efforts to reduce government spending. Even Elizabeth Warren is getting in on this criticism. The distrust of power wielded by unelected officials has reached a new high. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) appear ...

A new rule from the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), slated to take effect in March, will remove health care debts from credit reports and bar lenders from considering medical debts in loan decisions. Meanwhile, state and local policymakers nationwide are pushing plans to forgive consumer medical debt. Such measures are intende ...

"They were fighting to keep a state of emergency always present as the surest guarantee of authoritarianism." – George Orwell, 1984  Last fall, the U.S. solicitor general filed a brief in the Supreme Court asserting, with unsettling assurance, that even three decades ago Congress was "presumably" aware "it was unlikely that there will ever be ...