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Showing 80 results

Sidney A. Shapiro

Fletcher Chair in Administrative Law

Sidney A. Shapiro | December 14, 2010

False Choices: Senator Warner’s Plan to Adopt a Regulation, Drop a Regulation

A particularly revealing story in The Washington Post this weekend reported on a sordid tale of regulatory failure that may have helped contribute to this spring and summer’s outbreak of outbreak of egg-borne salmonella that sickened more than 1,900 people and led to the largest recall of eggs in U.S. history. In an agonizing case of […]

Sidney A. Shapiro | August 31, 2010

Boehner’s Attack on Regulation Runs Afoul of Lessons From BP and Katrina

Cross-posted from the Huffington Post. Eager to blame the state of the economy on the Administration, House Minority Leader John Boehner recently tried to argue that the Administration’s regulatory agenda is standing in the way of recovery. Sadly for Boehner, he tried to make that case shortly before the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and […]

Sidney A. Shapiro | May 19, 2010

New CPR White Paper Critiques Supreme Court’s Heightened Pleading Standard for Getting Complaints into Federal Court

Cross-posted from ACSblog. The Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) today released a white paper examining “plausibility pleading”-the Supreme Court’s heightened pleading standard that plaintiffs must satisfy in order to bring their claims in federal court. The paper, Plausibility Pleading: Barring the Courthouse Door to Deserving Claimants, comes after the Court’s decision one year ago this […]

Sidney A. Shapiro | March 19, 2010

Congress Considers Higher OSHA Penalties (Again)

The Workforce Protections Subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee held a hearing Tuesday on the Protecting America’s Workers Act of 2009, legislation that would, among other reforms, modernize workplace health and safety penalties. More than a decade ago, I testified at a similar hearing in the House of Representatives on the same subject. […]

Sidney A. Shapiro | January 28, 2010

Where is NHTSA? Toyota Recall and the Missing Regulator

When my children were growing up, they loved the “Where’s Waldo” book series. Each page had an illustrated picture chock full of people and objects; hidden somewhere among the mass of detail was a small picture of a cartoon character named Waldo. When the Toyota Motor Corporation announced this week that it was stopping the […]

Sidney A. Shapiro | January 11, 2010

Back to the Future: OMB Intervention in Coal Ash Rule Replicates the Bush Administration’s Way of Doing Business

As reported in a post Saturday, OMB has become the epicenter for industry efforts to head off an EPA regulation concerning coal ash. There have been 17 meetings between industry interests and OMB officials. When questioned about the large number of meetings, an OMB spokesman said, “This has been a very regular, very normal deliberative […]

Sidney A. Shapiro | December 15, 2009

Déjà Vu all Over Again: OSHA’s Inability to Stop Serial Violators on Display in New Hampshire Foundry

The Concord Monitor has identified a New Hampshire factory (Franklin Non-Ferrous Foundry) that has been the subject of previous OSHA investigations and fines, yet continues to expose its workers to dangerous conditions. OSHA’s most recent fine, $250,000, came after the agency found that a worker had high levels of lead in his blood. The newspaper […]

Sidney A. Shapiro | November 25, 2009

Toyota Cars and Automobile Regulation, Still Defective: Recall Could Miss a Million Faulty Cars. Congress Should Investigate.

This morning, Toyota Motor Corporation announced it intends to replace accelerator pedals on about 3.8 million recalled vehicles in the United States because the pedals can get stuck in a floor mat. But the recall could still leave more than a million faulty cars on the road. As I wrote earlier, there had been over […]

Sidney A. Shapiro | November 12, 2009

Defective: Toyota Cars and Automobile Regulation

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently chastised the Toyota Motor Company for claiming that no defect existed in its cars, even while recalling 3.8 million of them. Toyota instituted the recall one month after a Lexus sedan suddenly accelerated out of control killing four people near San Diego. When Toyota blamed the problem on improperly […]