FedSoc Forums

Fifty years ago, on August 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon put the economic and financial world into a new era. Through his decision to "close the gold window," he fundamentally changed the international monetary system into the system of today, where the whole world runs on pure fiat currencies. "The dollar was the last ship moored to gold, with all the other currencies on board, and the U.S. c...

Join Mr. Peter Kirsanow and Mr. Vivek Ramaswamy in the latest installment of our Talks with Authors series to discuss Ramaswamy's newly published book: Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam. A description of the book originally published here and republished below follows: --- A young entrepreneur makes the case that politics has no place in business, and sets out a new vision...

This webinar is the first in a two-part series covering employee and employer religious rights and related labor issues. What are employees' rights to express or practice their religion at work? Can they be exempt from dress codes or grooming requirements? Can they take prayer breaks or a day off to observe the Sabbath? Can they avoid having to participate in holiday parties, abortion procedures (...

On September 1, 2021, the Texas Heartbeat bill went into effect, banning abortions as soon as cardiac activity is present in an unborn child—around six weeks gestation. The bill also allows private citizens to sue and enforce the new law. Opponents of the bill appealed to the Supreme Court for an emergency stay and the Court denied relief, allowing the Texas law to go into effect. Joining us...

Finance ministers from leading industrial states have been trying, this summer, to work out an agreement on a minimum rate for corporate taxes. Does it matter that this agreement won’t be adopted by the constitutional procedure for making treaties? Will it still matter, by itself, to U.S. tax law and tax enforcement? Should we expect other nations to abide by an agreement of this kind? Discussion...

In July 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that California's recent school closures violated parental rights to direct the education of children, and reversed the lower court's decision upholding California's regulations as they relate to private education. Robert Dunn, who argued the case at the Ninth Circuit for plaintiffs, joins us to discuss the litigation, this ruling...

Professor George La Noue joined us to discuss his recently published article, “The Race Card in ARPA’s Food Supply Deck,” published by the Federalist Society Review on July 12, 2021. In his article, Professor La Noue discused the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, which appropriated $1.9 trillion, $28.6 billion of which would be administered by the Small Business Administration. S...

In a January 26, 2021 White House Memorandum, President Biden directed the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development to reexamine actions taken during the Trump presidency, and ordering the Secretary to ensure the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which bans discrimination, was being properly administered. On that initiative, Housing Secretary Marcia Fudge moved to reinstate two Obama-era Fair Housing rules...

As students prepare return to universities across the country, many schools are putting in place Covid vaccine mandates. These mandates require proof of vaccination, and typically include medical and religious exemptions. But, as Professor Ronald Colombo's new paper raises, some kinds of exemption schemes may be unjustly discriminatory. Beyond the issue of exemptions, some students and staff objec...

Last year, the Oregon state bar Bulletin ran two controversial comments. State bar members objected, arguing that because membership in the state bar is mandatory, publication of the comments constituted impermissible political commentary, and mandatory state bar dues could not be used to subsidize activity unrelated to the regulation of the state bar. The case landed in the Ninth Circuit which af...

On July 16, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit issued a decision in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA v. University of Iowa et al. A three-judge panel composed of Circuit Judges Loken, Grasz, and Kobes held that University officials violated the First Amendment when they deregistered a Christian student group, further holding that the university officials were not entitled t...

On June 21, 2021, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled a shareholder-plaintiff had standing to sue California’s Secretary of State. Creighton Meland, a shareholder at OSI Systems, Inc., sued alleging that Senate Bill 826, which was signed into law in 2018, violates the Fourteenth Amendment because it requires corporations to elect a sliding scale quota of women to corporate board...

With expressions ranging from enthusiasm to serious interest, central banks from China to Europe have been actively exploring the potential for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). On June 28, Federal Reserve Board Vice Chairman for Supervision Randal Quarles offered comments that, far from equivocal, expressed great doubt about the feasibility and desirability for the Federal Reserve sponsori...

This virtual event examined current national security issues, including relations with China, as well as coordination with allies, utilization of available legal tools, and whether those tools might be effective. Featuring: -- Hon. Nazak Nikakhtar, Partner, Wiley Rein LLP. Nazak served as Assistant Secretary for Industry and Analysis at the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Adminis...

With Democrats holding power in both houses of Congress and the White House, how will congressional oversight and investigations affect private industry and the Biden Administration during the 117th Congress? What should we expect if Republicans take back one or both houses of Congress in the midterm elections? What should private entities expect from congressional investigations, and what effect...

Opioid deaths in the US rose 29% during the course of the recent COVID pandemic. More than 55,000 Americans die annually from opioid consumption. Overtaken to some extent by other events, the opioid crisis is still with us and might be getting worse. The four participants in this panel discussion brought a wealth of experience and insight to this ongoing problem from both a law enforcement and pub...

A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education is a collection of eight essays written by experts in the field examining and analyzing the impact of racial diversity preferences and identity politics in American colleges and universities. The book’s title comes from a 1976 California Supreme Court opinion in Bakke v. UC Regents authored by Justice Stanley Mosk, who wr...

Aside from the purely legal questions already addressed in this programming series, how should we think about the practical and philosophical questions at stake? Many of us start with the presumption that the social media companies are private businesses and therefore may operate according to viewpoint norms as their owners see fit. But the growing reliance on big tech platforms, combined with the...

The Congressional Review Act (CRA) was used in 2017 to overturn 15 rules issued near the end of the Obama administration. The shift in political control in the White House and Congress this year set the stage for a possible repeat with respect to Trump administration rules. The CRA’s period for expedited congressional procedures (free of the Senate filibuster) has now expired for late Trump era re...

On June 25, 2021, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Transunion LLC v. Ramirez. In this case, a class of plaintiffs sued the credit reporting company TransUnion under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The plaintiffs alleged that the process Transunion used to flag consumer credit worthiness accounts—running consumers names against the U.S. Treasury Departments’ Office of Foreign Assets Control...

On June 29, 2021, the Supreme Court held that the Eleventh Amendment did not bar Penneast Pipeline Co., exercising federal eminent domain authority under the Natural Gas Act, from suing the State of New Jersey to acquire state-owned property to construct a natural gas pipeline. The Supreme Court rejected New Jersey’s arguments that the federal eminent domain power had not been properly deleg...

What should the Supreme Court do when it finds one provision of a statute unconstitutional? There is a significant split between current Justices on the question where Congress has not provided express instructions on severance within the statute. Several believe the Court should save the rest of the statute, while others have expressed skepticism towards this practice. This distinguished panel wi...

On July 1, 2021, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Brnovich, Attorney General of Arizona v. Democratic National Convention. The DNC sued the state of Arizona arguing that two of the State’s election procedures—refusing to count ballots that were incorrectly cast out of precinct and forbidding most third parties from collecting vote-by-mail ballots for delivery—had a dispar...

Several states are considering how to regulate the content moderation practices of social media and other tech platforms. Some are focused primarily on protecting a wider range of expressible user viewpoints, while other states are concerned with strengthening incentives on platforms to engage in more aggressive moderation of potentially harmful speech. Some states are also pursuing antitrust enfo...

On June 17, 2021, the Supreme Court issued its 8-1 decision in Nestle USA, Inc. v. Doe et al and the consolidated case of Cargill, Inc. v. Doe I. In this case, six people from Mali who had been trafficked as child slaves onto cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast sued under the Alien Tort Statute, arguing that since the American companies Nestle and Cargill provided financial and technical support to tho...