Declaratory Judgments as Implicit Coercion: The Case of Judge Vinson's Health Care Decision

I always tell my Remedies students (following Laycock's formulation) that declaratory judgments are implicitly coercive---and that they are just one step away from an injunction. Jonathan Cohn explains how this logic is playing out in the most recent health care decision.

"Is it Whom You Know or What You Know? An Empirical Assessment of the Lobbying Process"

Bertrand, Bombardini, and Tebbi have posted this draft on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

What do lobbyists do? Some believe that lobbyists' main role is to provide issue-specific information and expertise to congressmen to help guide the law-making process. Others believe that lobbyists mainly provide the firms and other special interests they represent with access to politicians in their "circle of influence" and that this access is the be-all and end-all of how lobbyists affect the lawmaking process. This paper combines a descriptive analysis with more targeted testing to get inside the black box of the lobbying process and inform our understanding of the relative importance of these two views of lobbying.

We exploit multiple sources of data covering the period 1999 to 2008, including: federal lobbying registration from the Senate Office of Public Records, Federal Election Commission reports, committee and subcommittee assignments for the 106th to 110th Congresses, and background information on individual lobbyists.

A pure issue expertise view of lobbying does not fit the data well. Instead, maintaining connections to politicians appears central to what lobbyists do. In particular, we find that whom lobbyists are connected to (through political campaign donations) directly affects what they work on. More importantly, lobbyists appear to systematically switch issues as the politicians they were previously connected to switch committee assignments, hence following people they know rather than sticking to issues. We also find evidence that lobbyists that have issue expertise earn a premium, but we uncover that such a premium for lobbyists that have connections to many politicians and Members of Congress is considerably larger.

I plan on giving this paper a very close read. One of the issues I've been pressed on as I have presented Lobbying, Rent Seeking, and the Constitution at workshops at Loyola, Irvine, USC, and Northwestern, is whether there's evidence that limits on lobbyist fundraising and a longer anti-revolving door period would in fact create a lobbying system more driven by a kind of information meritocracy than one that trades on personal relationships and favors. So this could be an important piece to that claim.

"Lobby Dollars Dip for First Time in Years"

Roll Call reports: "Some of this change may be attributed to a quirk in accounting practices under which lobbying expenditures are reported, but it is also indicative of several major players scaling back their Washington influence spending last year."

"CREW Asks IRS to Drop Tax Exemption Of American Future Fund for Political Activity"

BNA Tax Report offers this report.

"Emanuel's just one among record number of ballot challenges"

Medill reports.

"The Kochs Fight Back"

Politico offers this interesting report.

Congratulations to Jim Brudney....

Jim has made a lateral move to Fordham. Also, with Jim's permission I can now share the news that he will be coming on as a co-author of the Eskridge, Frickey and Garrett legislation casebook. That is great news for people (like me) who use this excellent casebook. Jim's work is among the most important (yet accessible) writing on statutory interpretation these days. Congratulations Jim!

"Ethics Committee Names Special Counsel to Aid in Ensign Investigation"

See here.

"Senate Won't Allow Earmarks in Spending Bills"

This item appears in NYT's "The Caucus" blog.

"Is a Bigger House a Better House?"

See these letters to the editor at the NYT.

"Few Obstacles Face Voter ID in the Legislature"

Must-read from the Texas Tribune.