Faculty Bibliography
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Stephen Breyer, The Federal Sentencing Guidelines: A Dialogue, 26 Crim. L. Bull. 5 (1990).
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The Supreme Court, in INS v. Chadha, held the legislative veto unconstitutional. Early reports have described the opinion as changing the balance of power between Congress and the executive. Certainly, the decision is important; Congress or the courts will have to reexamine dozens of statutes to determine whether an offending veto clause is severable or whether the entire statute falls with the clause. The balance of power consequences are more difficult to predict. Tonight, I shall begin a discussion of that subject by asking whether the old veto might reemerge in new legal clothes. Drawing on my experience on the Senate staff, I shall suggest it is just possible that there may be life after death for the legislative veto; but whether Congress will take the necessary steps is uncertain. One might also ask, "Is such a resurrection desirable?" Here, based upon my study of government regulation, I shall express skepticism.
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In an attack upon the current natural gas shortage, President Nixon has recently urged an end to much of the Federal Power Commission's regulation of the price of natural gas at t he wellhead. From the perspectives of both the lawyer and the economist, Professors Breyer and MacAvoy lend support to a policy change in this direction. They show that regulation of gas wellhead prices raises problems substantially different from the regulation of traditional public utilities. They argue that the policies the Commission has pursued were almost inevitably bound to result in wellhead prices below the market level that would call forth supplies sufficient to meet demand, and, through econometric analysis, they demonstrate the extent to which the Commission's pricing practices produced the shortage. While the Commission's policies were aimed at helping home consumers, data gathered by the authors indicate that regulation has brough about precisely the opposite result. The Commission's experience may well cast light on the wisdom of adopting regulatory techniques to redistribute income when serious economic efficiency losses are likely to arise.
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Congress is currently considering the first major revision of the Copyright Act of 1909. Professor Breyer examines the moral and economic rationale for copyright in books. He goes on to consider propsals that would lengthen the term of protection and increase its scope in relation to photocopies and computer programs. On the basis of existing evidence he is unable to conclude that copyright should be abolished, but he argues that its extension is unnecessary and would be harmful.