Federal Trade Commission v. Tenet: a retrospective review and analysis

Primarily through a series of interviews with a variety of interested persons, the author analyzes the controversial merger of two hospitals in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, in late 1999. A district court had stopped the merger in 1998; however, the Eighth Circuit overturned the decision the following year, therefore permitting the parties to execute the merger. The Article highlights the effects of, and the market's response to, the merger. Results reveal that in the two years following the merger, none of the parties interviewed believe the merger was favorable. Similarly, parties perceive that the price of care has increased, while the quality of care has not improved. Nonetheless, at the two-year mark, it remains too soon to determine whether the government's concerns in opposing the merger have been justified.     

Metaphor and Imagination in James Wilson's Theory of Federal Union

"Through metaphor, the past has the capacity to imagine us, and we it." -Cynthia Ozick, in "The Moral Necessity of Metaphor"
American federalism is nothing more-und nothing less-than a metaphor.
This was how lames Wilson, the most prominent lawyer at the Philadelphia Convention, came to approach the novel problem of understanding and conveying what federalism in a modern republic should mean. The Federal Republic created in 1787 was, for Wilson, more than a mutter of ingenious political design, more than a mutter of the "new science of politics," and more than a mutter of constitutional law or constitutionalism itself-unless the Constitution were seen to "comprehend" the moral purpose and moral promise of the new nation.
To Wilson, this view of the importance of the moral content of republican federalism was entailed by the "knowledge" that he took to be the necessary foundation of the Republic. It was this knowledge of certain fundamental principles- of "moral science,'I human nature, and the nature of language, and, more generally, of "cultivation" us a political and social process that was also an end in itself-that ultimately justified "the People" us the "sublime" metaphor governing American constitutional theory.
Yet, for all Wilson's faith in figurative "comprehensiveness," his distinctive approach to securing the New Republic through a federal union of the American People seems to have proved less and less compelling to his contemporaries the more he tried to pursue it as far us his vision of a politics of cultivation directed.     

Naturalizing the Artificial Citizen: Repeating Lochner's Error in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

In March, the Supreme Court of the United States, in a 5-4 vote, handed down Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a sweeping ruling providing more protection for corporate political media spending as First Amendment “speech” than ever before. This article demonstrates that Citizens United nullified a century of democratic will by representing First Amendment protection for such spending to be part of nature rather than a legal construct. If Cass Sunstein's influential assessment is correct that the lesson of Lochner v. New York is the judicial error inherent in imposing such artificial baselines to measure the constitutionality of government regulation, then Citizens United can be understood to repeat that error.     

Australian Full Federal Court clarifies best method disclosure obligation in Pfizer v Eli Lilly appeal

The Australian Full Federal Court has found that (i) a patentapplicant may amend the patent specification, until at leastthe date of grant, to include the best method known to the applicantat the date of filing and that (ii) there is no requirementthat new best methods discovered after the date of filing ofa complete patent specification be added by amendment.