Anne Joseph O’Connell quoted by Fox News, Feb. 8, 2017
“Deputy secretaries are more important than Cabinet-level positions and they take a long time to fill,” said UC Berkeley Law Professor Anne Joseph O’Connell, who tracks presidential appointees. “You can have a secretary without government experience, but if they are paired with a deputy who understands laws that apply to government and not corporations, it works well—It’s a counter-balancing of expertise.”
Michael Kiparsky co-writes for The Sacramento Bee, Feb. 8, 2017
Few people realize how outdated our systems for water information are. Because of data limitations, real-time, transparent decisions about drought management, flood response and groundwater protection have eluded the state for the past century. Without basic numbers on where, when and how much water is available and being used, we can’t improve how we manage our most precious water and natural resources.
Ethan Elkind quoted by Greenwire, Feb. 8, 2017
California can exert influence over the next four years, said Ethan Elkind. … The state through its programs invests in renewable technologies, helping push down costs. And as California adopts climate rules and sees a healthy economy, he said, “that creates a powerful example for the rest of the world to follow.”
John Yoo, Jesse Choper and Dan Farber quoted by The Daily Californian, Feb. 8. 2017
Yoo said Gorsuch’s past stances on religious liberty, such as in the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. case in 2014, are most likely the reason he was considered for the nomination.
“Yes, (Gorsuch) is qualified, perhaps better than any other nomination (Trump) has made to cabinet seats,” Choper said.
Gorsuch is someone who is open-minded and does not have a knee-jerk response, Farber said. He added he believes Gorsuch’s past opinions on the 10th Circuit have had a more “humane” tone than Scalia’s.
John Yoo interviewed by KQED-FM, Forum, Feb. 7, 2017
“I think it boils down to this straightforward principle: The President under the Constitution was supposed to be aimed at foreign policy and national security. … All these things that President Trump said he’s going to do are actually things that are vested in our Constitution in Congress, because they really are more about domestic policy than they are about the need to act quickly and swiftly in response to foreign emergencies.”
Steven Davidoff Solomon writes for The New York Times, Feb. 7, 2017
If the government really wants to preserve the 30-year mortgage market, it should simply limit these two entities to that loan product, and only that 30-year loan product. Everything else seems not only to preserve the tenuous position of Fannie and Freddie, but also to risk making them just instruments for unrestrained housing policy with lots of unintended consequences and risks.
Jesse Choper quoted by California Magazine, Feb. 7, 2017
“I think they did what they could,” Choper said of administrators. “They let Yiannopoulos speak, because they had no real legal justification for stopping the event. They allowed the demonstrators to demonstrate, and dealt with the black bloc when they started destroying property. I don’t come down on the side of the university all the time, but I think they did the right thing in this case. They balanced values and costs.”
William Fernholz writes for The Hill, Feb. 6, 2017
The immigration order should be bone-chilling to those conservatives who care about federal government overreach. And principled liberals should be thanking the conservative justices on the United States Supreme Court for their defense of state independence.
Holly Doremus, Daniel Farber, and Bill Falik quoted by California Magazine, Feb. 6, 2017
Doremus: “There’s not a lot of existing border fencing in Texas, so the wall would have to pass through a lot of private land where barriers haven’t been much of an issue until now,” she says. “And certainly, eminent domain seizures are not popular with Republicans in general and Texas Republicans in particular.”
Farber: “The wall would cost a lot, and its benefits are unclear, but the Secure Fence Act does give the administration pretty broad powers to dispense with legal requirements such as NEPA. I’d love to see it stopped, but it may be difficult.”
Falik: “It’s really expensive,” observes Bill Falik, a lecturer at Berkeley Law and a real estate developer, “and I’m not completely sure at this point that a Republican congress is going to be anxious to go along with that.” Nor is Falik convinced that federal statutes such as the Endangered Species Act and NEPA would suddenly turn the project into smoldering rubble; rather, they might inflict the death of a thousand torts.
Karin Mac Donald quoted by InsideSources, Feb. 6, 2017
“So here’s the funny thing,” Berkeley Law election expert Karin Mac Donald told InsideSources. “There is no more long form questionnaire. We did away with the long form. The last long form was used in the 2000 census. So, they cannot include a question to determine U.S. citizenship and immigration status on the long form because there is no long form.”