Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

In August 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission set out an extensive list of rules for the marketing of private investment funds. These rules covered funds that had, until then, been specifically exempt from SE regulation.  But the SEC was employing new mandates bestowed upon it by (its interpretation of) the Dodd-Frank Act, which in turn was a legislative response to the global financial crises of 2007-09. Six financial industry trade bodies joined to file a lawsuit to strike the new rules. These bodies included the National Association of Private Fund Managers and the Alternative Investment Management Association.  They made four arguments.  I'll rank them from the most procedural to the most substantive.  They argued that the new regulation violates the premises of notice-and-comment rule making (in re the final rule was not closely enough related to the original rule, so there had been no proper notice of the final rule); that the SEC is required to produc...

  SCOTUS ended this term with aplomb, and with a bomb, the long-awaited ruling on student debt relief. The decision, which struck the Biden administration's debt relief program, came about, in formal terms, as an interpretation of the Higher Education Relief Opportunities Act.  Some in the US maintain that it would be both right and urgent to make college free in the United States. Forgive all college-generated debt, and nationalize the financing of college that will make lending for such purposes hereafter a non-issue. The Biden administrations plans fall very very short of that. To Biden this is a one-shot debt forgiveness, rather narrowly targeted. Only $20,000 of debt forgiveness for 30 million people. The idea is to give those people a one-time break, given the general impression that the lending has gotten out of control and the borrowers are suffering too great a burden. Also, this one-shot move can be justified as a post-Covid stimulus, akin to the checks that Presiden...