Top Regulatory Stories of 2017

The Regulatory Review is pleased to highlight the top fifty pieces of 2017 authored by The Regulatory Review staff contributors. These articles, which qualify for this list based on the number of page views, are arranged below in alphabetical order by last name of author. May 24, 2017 | Alina Artunian Twenty years after the debut of the award-winning musical Rent, New Yorkers are still struggling with rising rent costs and finding “a way to pay.” It is no surprise that New Yorkers and tourists alike have turned to Airbnb, the popular online community that helps connect hosts and travelers around the world, to find affordable housing in the city. However, in October 2016, the New York legislature signed into law a bill that prohibits apartment advertisements for purposes other than permanent residence. October 25, 2017 | Benjamin Barsky A new war on drugs is taking place—and this time, it is being waged against prescription opioid abuse. Medical professionals prescribe opioids to treat pain from injuries, surgeries, and chronic diseases. Insurers play a key role in such treatment because they allow insureds—that is, people covered by health insurance—to get prescription opioids without incurring overwhelming costs. But in a recent article, one legal scholar argues that regulators have “widely ignored” the role insurers should play in addressing the epidemic, despite being central to the problem. January 2, 2017 | Thomas D. Campbell When making health care decisions, few patients with health insurance have to consider the overall costs of their treatment. Instead, they are able to focus on their recovery. What most patients don’t realize, however, is that they benefit from a system of negotiated prices and under-paid procedures, which often leaves uninsured patients to shoulder the costs. Vermont is now taking steps to address problems that can arise from this opaque system, including rising health care costs. June 14, 2017 | Thomas D. Campbell Every year, the United States receives 35,000 new requests for kidney transplants. Kidney reserves, however, can supply only 17,000 procedures per year. Over time, this difference between need and supply has produced a wait list including roughly 100,000 patients hoping to receive kidneys. What would it take for you to agree to donate a kidney? Nicola Lacetera, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Institute for Management and Innovation, has found that U.S. residents are likely to support the provision of governmental incentives directed toward living donors. August 31, 2017 | Katie Cramer Average home prices in Seattle, Washington have jumped more than 12 percent in the past year. Hiring frenzies at technology giants including Amazon and Facebook have helped fuel the Seattle area’s housing demand and increase living expenses as the city grows. A recently revised proposal to regulate short-term rental properties—like those listed on Airbnb and VRBO—aims to protect housing stock in the Pacific Northwest city without disturbing the supplemental income individual homeowners can earn through the sharing platforms. October 10, 2017 | Katie Cramer Many of us may take for granted that we can create social media profiles using our own names. But two years ago Facebook made headlines when a number of Native American users, including Dana Lone Hill and Lance Browneyes, reportedly were forced to edit their names to gain access. During a recent workshop at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, computer scientist Sorelle Friedler highlighted the Facebook controversy as an example of how bias can creep into computer codes in ways that designers do not foresee when writing them. October 11, 2017 | Katie Cramer Pittsburgh has an innovation to trumpet: its surrounding county government has digitized its records and is now using big data analysis to improve health and human services. At a workshop held earlier this year at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, a trio of policy experts discussed the big data developments in Allegheny County as well as other efforts to build algorithmic decision-making into government services more broadly. September 5, 2017 | Kim Cullen The Philadelphia City Council unanimously passed a new “anti-pet mill” ordinance last year. The ordinance prohibits pet shops from selling puppies and kittens that come from large-scale, commercial breeding facilities with poor living conditions. Although Philadelphia has joined other cities and states in increasing protections for dogs and cats, some scholars note that other types of animals—particularly agricultural animals such as cows, chickens, and pigs—are not receiving the same sort of attention from regulators. January 26, 2017 | Justin S. Daniel In a recent video message, President-elect Trump promised to develop a plan to eliminate two old regulations for each new one. However, it was reportedly Canada that first developed such a rule when it implemented its “One-for-One” law in April 2015 as part of a regulatory reform agenda. A recently published paper by Sean Speer, a senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank R Street Institute, considers how Canada’s track record with so-called “regulatory budgeting” can provide useful lessons to U.S. policymakers considering similar options for reform. August 2, 2017 | Justin S. Daniel When thieves are required to repay the money they stole, are they being punished? Or is the repayment just compensation to those from whom they stole? These questions recently presented themselves to the U.S. Supreme Court in Kokesh v. SEC, a case in which the Supreme Court considered whether the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s pursuit of “disgorgement”—a type of repayment—is properly understood as a “penalty” within the meaning of a statute imposing a five-year limitation on the imposition of penalties by the SEC. September 4, 2017 | Justin S. Daniel When you need help during an emergency, you call 9-1-1—and each of your first responders has a clear role to play and works together to achieve a common goal: ensuring your well-being. According to former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, that same type of coordinated response across the public and private sectors is exactly what “we need to defend our country against major cyber-attacks.” But former Secretary Pritzker also recognized that achieving this unified partnership may require “fundamentally changing” the way businesses work with federal agencies to counter cyber threats. October 12, 2017 | Justin S. Daniel Is climate change a “reasonably foreseeable” consequence from a government agency’s approval of a natural gas pipeline? What if an entirely separate agency regulates the facilities that will actually burn the transported gas? A three-judge panel of a federal court of appeals recently grappled with these questions and determined that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission—in considering and approving the construction of a natural gas pipeline project—should have considered the eventual burning of natural gas when weighing environmental concerns. November 27, 2017 | Justin S. Daniel Justice Neil Gorsuch’s criticism of courts’ practice of giving special weight to agency interpretations of law was front and center during his confirmation hearings earlier this year. But with Justice Gorsuch now on the U.S. Supreme Court, and congressional Republicans considering ways to constrain the administrative state, what are the best legal options for reforming Chevron? A forthcoming article surveys recent arguments in favor of scaling back or eliminating judicial doctrines under which federal courts defer to agency interpretations. January 25, 2017 | Taylor Daily Travel to Cuba is booming, with 140,000 Americans thought to have visited the Caribbean nation in 2016. Yet, most types of travel to Cuba are still prohibited by statute; the increase in tourism has occurred because the Obama Administration decided to reduce enforcement of a travel ban. Without further legislative action, the Trump Administration could reverse this policy and once again limit visits to the island. August 15, 2017 | Taylor Daily In a recent article, Professor Brian D. Galle of the Georgetown University Law Center argues that “ex post regulation”—which imposes liability only after a harm occurs—has even more significant disadvantages than previously thought. Since managers at regulated firms have a tendency to discount long-term regulatory consequences, Galle favors “ex ante regulation”—or imposing costs before an actor harms another—as the more efficient way of regulating. January 20, 2017 | Griffin Davis President-elect Donald Trump’s regulatory agenda is no secret, but precisely how he can go about enacting it is less obvious. According to his campaign website, President-elect Trump’s regulatory goals include eliminating the country’s “most intrusive regulations.” So, how do President-elect Trump and the new Congress go about eliminating regulations? The answer to that question may depend upon the precise form of each targeted regulation. May 29, 2017 | Griffin Davis In a recent paper, two scholars consider the ways in which robo-advisors differ from human advisors and discuss the obstacles these differences present to regulators as they design regulatory schemes for robo-advisors. Tom Baker of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Benedict G. C. Dellaert of Erasmus University Rotterdam argue that the public should not assume robo-advisors would not be subject to the same misalignment of incentives, particularly when the robo-advisors are designed or purchased by financial intermediaries with the same incentives as human advisors. June 29, 2017 | Griffin Davis Countercyclical regulation is a method to cut back regulation during times of economic downturn and high unemployment. The countercyclical approach is primarily in response to the argument that regulation ha

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