The Roundtable
Welcome to the Roundtable, a forum for incisive commentary and analysis
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
 By Owen Voutsinas-Klose
Owen Voutsinas-Klose is a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics and minoring in Legal Studies and History in the College of Arts and Sciences. State courts play a vital role in serving as a check on legislatures and administering justice against companies and individuals accused of wrongdoing. Unlike at the federal level, many states elect most or all of their highest court justices. Seven states, including North Carolina and Pennsylvania, elect justices to their highest courts. Twenty states hold partisan judicial elections at all trial court levels. [1]
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 By Owen Voutsinas-Klose
Owen Voutsinas-Klose is a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics and minoring in Legal Studies and History in the College of Arts and Sciences. In 2016, Makhan Delrahim predicted that the recently announced AT&T and Time Warner merger would be approved by regulators quickly. “I don’t see this as a major antitrust problem” Delrahim, at the time a law professor, told a media outlet. Yet in 2017, almost exactly a year later, the Justice Department under Delrahim (now serving as the Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division) suddenly blocked the merger weeks after it had been expected to have been approved. The question of what caused the sudden change of heart for Trump’s Justice Department and the man who leads its antitrust efforts is central to the impending trial that has far reaching implications for future antitrust policy. [1]  By Owen Voutsinas-Klose
Owen Voutsinas-Klose is a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics minoring in Legal Studies and History in the College of Arts and Sciences. On October 16th 2017, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced a directive implementing restrictions on the EPA - affecting its settlements with outside groups. These regulations include requiring proposed changes to regulations resulting from a settlement to be published prior to the settlement and prohibiting the payment of attorneys’ fees as a part of a settlement. The directive aims to end the EPA’s notorious “sue and settle” scheme, which was used by past administrations (notably the Obama administration) to enact major environmental policy changes on a quicker timeframe than typically statutorily allowed [1]. But what is “sue and settle”, and why was this directive considered a major change by regulatory law experts?  By Owen Voutsinas-Klose
Owen Voutsinas-Klose is a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania. Gerrymandering, the time-honored American tradition that gets its name from Massachusetts’s early 19th century-era Governor Elbridge Gerry, is seeing a new threat from a judiciary increasingly keen on invalidating overtly partisan maps. The process of redistricting varies greatly by state, with some states including California, Arizona and Iowa using independent citizens commissions or offices to draw lines following each census with the goal of eliminating partisan bias. However, in the vast majority of states, the legislature is responsible for creating maps. The issue of gerrymandering took up special prominence in recent years after the GOP wave in 2010 allowed the party power in a record number of state legislatures coincidentally in the year of a census, allowing them control of maps. A particularly egregious example of this gerrymandering is in Wisconsin, where the 2010 elections gave the GOP total control over government. Using computer software and taking advantage of the tendency of Democrats to congregate in smaller areas, Republicans enacted a map that resulted in them taking 60 of 99 seats in the Wisconsin Assembly, despite losing the popular vote to Democrats in the 2012 election cycle [1]. |
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