The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) has raised the stakes for financial regulation by requiring more than twenty federal agencies to promulgate nearly 400 new rules. Scholars, regulated entities, Congress, courts, and the agencies themselves have all recognized—even before Dodd-Frank—the lack of rigorous cost-benefit analysis in the context of financial rulemaking. The D.C. Circuit has struck down several financial regulations because of inadequate cost-benefit analysis, with three more challenges to be decided this summer. Members of Congress have introduced legislation to address this problem, including a call for the President to intervene to require more exacting economic analysis. Regulated entities and investor protection groups are vigorously debating whether (and how) financial regulators should engage in cost-benefit analysis, as are a variety of policymakers, academics, and commentators. [...]

In December, the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, thrust the Second Amendment into the forefront of national media attention once again. The massacre of schoolchildren by assault rifle reignited a debate among pundits about the meaning of the right to bear arms, but it may surprise many Americans to learn that the Second Amendment continues to fuel debate over another topic of national importance: the rights of illegal immigrants. [...]

The Supreme Court has added to its upcoming docket Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., to consider the question: “Are human genes patentable?” This question implicates patent law’s “products of nature” doctrine, which excludes from patentability naturally occurring materials. The Supreme Court has previously recognized that “anything under the sun that is made by man” falls within patentable subject matter, implying that things under the sun not made by man do not fall within patentable subject matter. [...]

On December 14, 2012, and in the weeks thereafter, our country mourned the deaths of twenty children and six educators who were brutally shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Since that horrific event, parents, educators, and lawmakers have understandably turned their attention to implementing stronger school security measures to prevent such atrocities from happening again. In fact, many states have enacted or proposed legislation to provide additional funds to schools for metal detectors, surveillance cameras, bulletproof glass, locked gates, and law enforcement officers. But because increased security measures are unlikely to prevent someone determined to commit a violent act at school from succeeding, funding currently dedicated to school security can be put to better use by implementing alternative programs in schools that promote peaceful resolution of conflict. [...]