On December 2, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Regulatory Accountability Act of 2011 (H.R. 3010) which would amend the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and create new federal rulemaking requirements. How might this legislation affect the rulemaking requirements of existing executive orders and more broadly the federal rulemaking process? On this previously recorded conference call, the experts provide their analysis of the Act and it's impact on the federal rulemaking process after which they provide answers to questions from callers. Featuring The Honorable C. Boyden Gray of Boyden Gray & Associates and Prof. Ronald M. Levin of Washington University School of Law.

Late in the afternoon on April 11, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson sat with his childhood school teacher, Mrs. Kate Deadrich Loney, on the lawn of the former Junction Elementary School in Johnson City, Texas. The reason for the meeting of a bespectacled retired teacher and her famous former pupil was the signing of the Elementary and Secondary School Act of 1965 (“ESEA”). With the President’s signature, the federal government’s role in elementary and secondary education began to increase rapidly, with Congress establishing the U.S. Department of Education (“Department”) in 1979. Today, the ESEA authorizes funding for key portions of school district budgets across the country. Despite this leverage, the Department has generally adhered to statutory limitations disallowing federal agency involvement in K-12 curriculum, courses, or instruction, focusing instead on issues such as aid for disadvantaged students, accountability, civil rights, and evaluation. Since 2009, this has changed: Actions taken by the Obama Administration signal an important policy shift in the nation’s education policy, with the Department placing the nation on the road to federal direction over elementary and secondary school curriculum and instruction... [Read more!]

Nicholas Wapshott's book examines the vastly divergent economic philosophies of John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich von Hayek. Messrs. Keynes and Hayek studied the normal course of the capitalist business cycle, especially after World War I, but reached radically different opinions about the role governments should play in regulating and ameliorating the effects of the business cycle. These two gentlemen, two of the most influential economic thinkers of the 20th Century, participated in on-going debates about the respective merits of their own philosophies and the demerits of the other's philosophies. Mr. Wapshott examines these debates and expounds on them in this podcast. Featuring Mr. Nicholas Wapshott, Author of Keynes vs. Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics, and Mr. James A. Haynes of the Professional Responsibility & Legal Education Practice Group Executive Committee and the Baltimore Lawyers Chapter.

Much has been written lately about companies’ unwillingness to invest or create new jobs in California. 2010 was the first census in which California did not add a member of Congress. Other states, including Texas, are seeing large influxes of new jobs and people. Some have suggested that California law (as passed by the legislature and as made by the courts) contributes to a negative business climate that discourages investment and job creation. This panel will look at California laws involving employment issues, tort liability, and environmental regulation and compare California’s approach to those of other states, including Texas to determine whether the law has become an impediment to job creation in California. This panel was featured at the Sixth Annual Western Conference on January 28, 2012. Featuring Mr. William J. Emanuel of Littler Mendelson PC; Mr. Jed Kolko of Trulia; Mr. H. Scott Leviant of Spiro Moss LLP; Mr. David A. Schwarz of Irell & Manella LLP; Ms. Kate Comerford Todd of the National Chamber Litigation Center; and Judge Carlos T. Bea of the  U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit as the moderator. Introduction by Mr. Leonard A. Leo, Executive Vice President of The Federalist Society.