The Rutgers Law Record

E-commenting, or commenting on administrative rules and notices on-line, has transformed the federal notice-and-comment practice. With a click of a button, citizens can easily share their thoughts on a proposed rule or notice. While the goal of increasing the opportunity for public participation is a worthy one, expanded public commenting has turned the notice-and-comment process into a “rulemaking arms race.” Agencies are now inundated with voluminous comments as public interest groups encourage members to submit boilerplate comments.

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This Article is offered in tribute to civil rights legends Leon Higginbotham, Spottswood Robinson, and David Rabinovitz whose judicial recess appointments were invalidated by National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning. It also honors President Lyndon Johnson, who made the bold decision within just six weeks of inheriting the Oval Office, to force racial and religious integration of the federal judiciary by signing the recess commissions. The appointments, made in January 1964 during an eight day intercession recess of the 88th Senate, were President Johnson’s initial salvo in a hard-fought battle that resulted in historic advances in both civil rights and economic justice. The recess appointments were the earliest manifestation of LBJ’s political will and unparalleled political skill that would soon force the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Economic Opportunity Act, Head Start, Medicare, and Medicaid. President Johnson’s January 1964 integration of the three district courts signaled the coming appointment of Thurgood Marshall first as U.S. Solicitor General, and then as the first African-American on the U.S. Supreme Court.

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More than 57,000 unaccompanied minors have crossed the United States border since January 2014. At risk youth flee gang violence in their home country. They come to the United States hoping that the government will consider resistance to joining gangs as grounds for asylum, and allow them to stay. For example, seventeen-year-old Ken is an undocumented immigrant from Honduras who has lived in the United States for two years but has recently been issued an order of deportation.

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After World War II, many European countries have tried to put into effect their own constitutions and as a result, their own welfare states. They invested and spent a significant amount of their national economic resources to guarantee social rights to all citizens, health care, retirement plans, and education. In order to guarantee the aforementioned rights, politicians decided to take on a huge amount of debt, regardless of the fact that sooner or later it would be difficult to control. On the other side of the world, the U.S. fears socialist programs. However, this did not exempt the U.S. from having one of the largest public debts in the world.
This article not only tries to explore the Italian welfare state by focusing attention on the Italian health care system, but also proposes interesting discussion points from a comparative perspective. On one side, Italy represents a classic socialist country. On the other, the U.S. is very capitalistic. The 2008 economic crisis imposed the need to reflect on the sustainability of the welfare state and its future development.

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Debt is an American epidemic. The total sum of consumer debt in the United States (U.S.) is approximately $11.4 trillion dollars. From 1985 to 2007, an average households’ debt increased from roughly 60% of post-tax annual income to more than 125%. During that same period, debt-to-income ratios nearly doubled. Furthermore, roughly 35% of all adults, more than 77 million Americans, hold debt that is delinquent and in collection. As a result, debt collection companies have found a viable and rapidly expanding market in debt collection. Currently, the debt-collecting industry employs nearly 500,000 people (debt purchasers) in the U.S. alone. In a study conducted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) between 2009 and 2012, nine of the largest buyers of defaulted debt on the secondary market acquired $143 billion in defaulted loans but paid only $6.5 billion for defaulted loan’s acquisition. This acquisition cost is equal to only four cents per dollar of defaulted debt. It is debt purchaser’s goal to collect as much of the remaining debt value as possible.

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