On Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission enacted one of the most significant regulations of the Biden years: a comprehensive ban on non-compete clauses. The final rule prohibits new non-compete clauses for all workers, regardless of line of work or income, and makes existing non-competes null and void for everyone except senior executives. A neurologist making $1 million a year and a gig worker... Source ..read more

On Monday, Aziz Rana kicked off a symposium on his new book, The Constitutional Bind. Given the manifest flaws of the U.S. Constitution, how did Americans come to idolize this document? And how might long-buried Left thinking about state and economy help free us from this culture of Constitution worship? On Tuesday, Willy Forbath continued the conversation, arguing that key left figures and... Source ..read more

Growing up on the slopes of Haleakalā, Maui, the daily commute to town involved driving down the single-laned highway encircled by cane fields as far as the eye could see. Similar views were common on weekend adventures to beaches or streams throughout Maui. Before the sugar mills shut down for good in 2016, schoolchildren knew it was harvesting day when a blanket of charred cane leaves would... Source ..read more

Earlier this month, the United States House of Representatives passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, a bill that would force TikTok’s parent company to sell the platform to U.S. citizens or be banished from the U.S. market. The same fate could await any other platform the President designates as a “foreign adversary-controlled application. Source ..read more

This post is part of a symposium on Aziz Rana’s The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them. Read the rest of the posts here. *** Aziz Rana is an invaluable scholar and public intellectual. No one has done more to push legal scholarship to examine law’s part in the construction of American empire and the building of the United States as a settler colonial... Source ..read more

On Monday, while the sun shone darkly in the sky, the inner light of the LPE community radiated forth: that’s right, it was our bi-annual round-up of forthcoming LPE and LPE-adjacent scholarship. Scrapped together from twitter announcements, ssrn, our whisper network, and an open submission call, the list contains many exciting .pdfs to add to your collection. On Tuesday... Source ..read more

When a low-income patient seeks to obtain legally-mandated financial assistance from a nonprofit hospital, the onus of responsibility lies with the patient. The convalescent, the chronically ill, even the grieving widow is responsible for successfully completing an application for financial assistance (often called charity care) on her own. This is no mean task. Hospitals ask for earnings receipts... Source ..read more

Earlier this month, a broad bipartisan majority in the House passed legislation that would force TikTok’s Chinese parent company to either sell the app or have it banned in the United States. A platform once known primarily for goofy dances and launching Lil Nas X to fame now stands at the center of a geopolitical struggle. But what is perhaps even more surprising is how the pending legislation... Source ..read more

Next month, in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the Supreme Court will consider whether it is constitutional for cities to punish unsheltered people for camping on public property, even when the city fails to provide adequate shelter. As Sara Rankin discussed in her post last week, the Court’s decision will have important implications for those experiencing homelessness, as well as for how cities... Source ..read more

On Monday, Mila Versteeg, Kevin Cope, and Gaurav Mukherjee wrapped up our mini–series on Grants Pass v. Johnson, by arguing that in granting homeless individuals the right to sleep on public lands, the Ninth Circuit has created perhaps the first federal social welfare right in American constitutional history. Moreover, the authors argue, the Ninth Circuit’s approach to doing so is innovative... Source ..read more