The federal government is increasingly a commercial actor, providing retail services directly through its own agencies and indirectly through private-sector contractors. Government involvement with and in the private sector is intended to capitalize on the expertise and efficiency of businesses, benefit taxpayers, and promote public ends. Yet this involvement also confers advantages that benefit the…
Groundwater is one of the world’s most important natural resources, and its importance will increase as climate change continues and the human population grows. But groundwater management has traditionally been governed by lax and uneven legal regimes. To the extent those regimes exist, they tend to focus on the extraction of groundwater rather than the…
In 1990, the United States ratified the Convention Against Torture (CAT), codifying a global commitment to refrain from transferring any person to a country where she may face torture. While the United States has steadfastly implemented the convention’s prohibition on deportations that result in foreign torture, American courts have failed to enforce CAT in cases…
President Trump launched a global trade war when he imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports in early 2018. The President’s authority for imposing these tariffs came from an exceedingly vague statutory provision, section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which allows the executive branch to tax or block imports that “threaten to…
