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Wyeth v. Levine, which will be heard by the Supreme Court on November 3, 2008, is a lawsuit at the boundary between the state tort liability system and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation of pharmaceuticals. The essential question is whether a pharmaceutical firm that fully complies with FDA regulations, including the provision of safety information, can be sued in state courts for failure to warn about drug safety, side effects, and other concerns. Patients will be better off if FDA preemption is upheld by the Supreme Court, but the path to that conclusion lies in the facts of the case itself, in the nature of the liability system, and especially in certain features of the FDA.

In November, the Supreme Court will have the chance to lower drug prices, spur innovation and increase patient access to innovative new therapies by ruling in favor of Food and Drug Administration "pre-emption." It can do so by giving federal regulators, not judges and juries in 50 different states, the ability to make authoritative national rulings as to the warnings that should be included on drug labels.

With little debate, the American Bar Association (ABA) has proposed enshrining a new right to legal counsel for low-income people in civil cases. Civil Gideon is ill advised. Aside from the tremendous cost to taxpayers, it will be counterproductive in its supposed goals of helping the poor and making the legal system more accessible.

On March 10, 2008, the New York Times broke the story that New York's governor, Eliot Spitzer, was the unnamed "Client No. 9" listed in a federal indictment involving a prostitution ring called the Emperor's Club. Spitzer's bull-in-a-china-shop tenure as governor made him many enemies in both parties, so his unsuccessful term ended with his resignation just two days later to preempt an inevitable impeachment. Press coverage was still focused on details of the rendezvous at Washington's swanky Mayflower hotel, the role of the suffering-but-loyal wife in sex scandals, and the identity of the vapid femme fatale call girl, when the new governor, David Paterson, took office and dominated the news cycle with his own confessions of tit-for-tat extramarital affairs in the considerably less swanky Days Inn.

Brief of John E. Calfee, Ernst R. Berndt, Robert Hahn, Tomas Philipson, Paul H. Rubin, and W. Kip Viscusi as Amicus Curiae Supporting Petitioners
In this amicus brief, prominent economists argue that FDA preemption is good for consumer safety and health policy and failure-to-warn litigation hurts consumer safety. FDA already has incentive to be overly cautious during the approval process, which leads to distortions in drug marketing and availability that have adverse consequences for public health. Preemption provides an important safeguard by countering the exacerbating impact of state tort lawsuits for failure-to-warn.

In this Briefly, Professor Michael Perino provides evidence that the Milberg Weiss scheme successfully extracted money that should have gone to their putative clients. Professor Perino�s study, using a database of approximately 730 class actions settlements and fee awards, examines the Milberg Weiss indictment in detail, and analyzes whether these kickback payments harmed class members. As settlements grew larger, the fee requests and awards of Milberg Weiss cases grew at a faster rate than non-Milberg cases; even within Milberg cases, settlements of cases subject to the indictment grew at a faster rate than non-indictment cases, suggesting that absent class members were, in fact, harmed by the kickbacks to representative plaintiffs, and that judicial scrutiny alone was insufficient to protect the interests of investors from predatory plaintiffs� attorneys. Professor Perino�s findings might even understate the problem, if, as Mr. Lerach claimed in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, �everybody was paying plaintiffs� and kickbacks are �industry practice� in securities class actions.

Jack Calfee testified about whether state tort litigation against FDA-approved drugs and devives should be preempted by FDA regulation. Mr. Calfee argued that economic reasoning and historical experience strongly suggest that FDA preemption, if it becomes standard law, would actually tend to improve patient welfare.

On February 26, 1993, Islamic terrorists exploded a 1,500-pound bomb in the garage of the World Trade Center, killing six and injuring more than a thousand. This was, a jury decided in 2006, 68% the responsibility of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a bit more than twice the responsibility of the men who actually engaged in the bombing. The Port Authority, potentially liable for billions because of the decision, including 100% of the "pain and suffering" claims, appealed, noting that the result was "bizarre." This week, a five-judge panel of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Manhattan unanimously upheld the jury verdict.

Don't count on the next president to undo George W. Bush's legal policies in the war on terrorism. All three remaining presidential candidates have pledged to close the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, pay greater respect to law, tamp down unilateral presidential powers, and enhance America's stature abroad. But many controversial Bush administration policies have already been revised to satisfy congressional and judicial critics. And after receiving a few harrowing threat briefings and absorbing the awesome personal responsibility of keeping Americans safe, the new commander in chief won't rush to eliminate the Bush program as it stands next January. He or she will realize that any legal climb-down that is later perceived as even indirectly responsible for an attack would be a personal and political disaster.

Ted Frank, Director of the AEI Legal Center for the Public Interest, testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee about the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund of 2001 and on H.R. 3543, the proposed James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2007. Mr. Frank concluded that the bill in its current form lacks the elements that made the original Victim Compensation Fund successful while magnifying its disadvantages and fairness problems.

Poker players learn to read the cards of the other players at the table by their actions. Betting patterns and other "tells" can permit a good poker player to understand the strength of his opponents' cards without ever seeing them. There have been only a handful of Vioxx trials, but the announced settlement of the Vioxx litigation provides strong tells as to the weakness of the plaintiffs' claims--and of the weaknesses of current pharmaceutical product liability law.

Despite some in the media calling patent reform dead, on January 24, 2008, the Senate placed S. 1145, the Patent Reform Act of 2007, on the general calendar. The next few weeks will be critical to the legislation, which the House passed in September. Although much of the discussion has focused on the different perspectives and concerns that the high tech and the biotech/pharma industries have about the legislation, the fact remains that the patent litigation system is broken. Congress should make every effort to fix it by writing into this legislation reasonable formulas for damage awards and venue rules that discourage forum-shopping.

The $25 million verdict against Sta-Rite had nothing to do with justice and everything to do with the personal enrichment of trial lawyers such as John Edwards.

The best case Thomas Geoghegan's "See You in Court: How the Right Made America a Lawsuit Nation?" takes the unusual tack of acknowledging that the litigation explosion is a bad development for America, but blaming it on policies of the right wing. Deregulation, deunionization, and the right's putative dismantling of the legal system and Rule of Law, Geoghegan argues, have driven Americans to the courts by cutting off alternative routes to social justice. Geoghegan effectively demonstrates that the Left should view skeptically the claims of the litigation lobby. But Geoghegan's attempt to blame conservatives for the increased role of litigation in society suffers from non sequiturs, self-contradictory arguments, and a general failure to engage his opponents' arguments fairly.

War is a continuation of politics by other means, the German strategist Carl von Clausewitz famously observed in his 19th-century treatise, "On War." Clausewitz surely could never have imagined that politics, pursued through our own courts, would be the continuation of war.Last week, I (a former Bush administration official) was sued by Jos� Padilla--a 37-year-old al Qaeda operative convicted last summer of setting up a terrorist cell in Miami. Padilla wants a declaration that his detention by the U.S. government was unconstitutional, $1 in damages, and all of the fees charged by his own attorneys.

The best case for the death penalty--or, at least, the best explanation of it--was made, paradoxically, by one of the most famous of its opponents, Albert Camus, the French novelist. Others complained of the alleged unusual cruelty of the death penalty, or insisted that it was not, as claimed, a better deterrent of murder than, say, life imprisonment, and Americans especially complained of the manner in which it was imposed by judge or jury (discriminatorily or capriciously, for example), and sometimes on the innocent.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a decision rejecting Enron investors' attempt to recover from investment banks. The ruling closes an underreported chapter in American litigation history: how trial lawyers used the Enron scandal to successfully and legally extort billions of dollars from investment banks with a legally meritless lawsuit.

...in many ways, the next Justice Department may be as important in the direction of the law as the next justice. In large part, that has to do with the types of cases and issues that I expect to preoccupy the Court over the coming years. In particular, business cases have become much more prominent on the Court's docket, and there are good reasons to hope that that trend will continue. To that extent, the justices' ideological orientation will matter less. Conversely, the Justice Department will matter more--more, I should say, than most people, including the present occupants of the Justice Department, appear to realize.

The Fair Credit Transactions Act, intended to protect against identity theft, permits statutory damages of $100 to $1,000 plus punitive damages for "willful" violations when receipts expose credit card information--even if the exposed information could not possibly lead to identity theft. Because Congress failed to cap damages, and because class action damages can run into the billions, courts or the Congress must intervene to prevent dozens of businesses from being bankrupted arbitrarily for immaterial violations of the law.

Democrats staged an 11th-hour showdown this week over a bill that funds the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Their aim: a huge handout to the trial bar. The furtive give-away is buried in the Food and Drug Administration Revitalization Act (FDARA), a funding bill that needs to pass this week if the agency is to avoid a budget crunch that could force it to fire its drug reviewers. If drug safety is so critical, why would Democrats risk issuing pink slips at the FDA? The provision raises the question of whether the hyperbole and hearings over drug safety these past several years was about improving public health, or merely paying off the lawyers.

by Michael S. Greve
Many Supreme Court watchers have noted the Roberts Court's striking preoccupation with "business cases"--that is, cases in which broad segments of the business community have an interest. Many have also found a supposedly "pro-business" pattern of outcomes in those cases and have interpreted it as a reflection of the post-O'Connor Court's conservative orientation. This Federalist Outlook presents a different and more ambitious interpretation. The Supreme Court may at last have hit upon an urgent and genuinely judicial program--the reconstruction, after decades of neglect, of a workable legal and constitutional infrastructure.

Six years after September 11, there is a healthy and extensive debate about the appropriate relationship between and scope of the powers of the three branches of government in addressing terrorism. Perhaps surprisingly, however, there has been little discussion of the role of unelected trial lawyers, and how the civil justice system and the judicial branch�s friendliness to regulation through litigation gives attorneys a financial incentive to use state and federal courts to undo sensitive decisions of the elected branches of government. Worse still is that the trial bar has lobbied for such an expanded role, and Congress has aided and abetted its goals.

One can imagine a parody�a team of wing-tipped attorneys parachuting into the wilds of Waziristan, armed with subpoenas forcing Osama bin Laden to produce all relevant documents and secure his attendance at a twentyday videotaped deposition (damn the Geneva Conventions against torture). The legal and photocopying bills alone would crush al Qaeda. The reality is much more prosaic�and less amusing.

It was expected that the Supreme Court's October Term 2006, which ended in June of this year, would result in decisions of great significance for the prospect of liability reform. And indeed this was so. But the surprise was that the greatest impact came not from the cases that immediately and directly raised issues of importance, but rather from unexpected turns in the Court's decisions in other cases.

Once-esoteric questions over the federal preemption of state law are now the subject of a prominent, politically charged debate. A year ago, we assembled a group of prominent legal scholars and practicing attorneys at AEI for a probing analysis and a spirited discussion of the difficult legal and policy issues of the preemption debate. Their essays are now published in an AEI Press volume entitled Federal Preemption: States' Powers, National Interests. This Federalist Outlook provides a brief overview of the book and a thumbnail sketch of the editors' conclusions.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could expand the scope of securities litigation. After heavy lobbying by the plaintiffs bar, the press is reporting that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will ask the solicitor general to intervene on the side of the plaintiffs, who are seeking to reverse an existing Supreme Court precedent. It remains to be seen whether the administration will support the trial bar's attempt to let meritless and extortionate securities litigation spiral out of control.

At a time when policy specialists in Washington and New York are debating the reasons why the United States seems to be losing financial transactions and public company listings to markets abroad, the arrival of the Stoneridge case at the Supreme Court tells us all we need to know.

May Texas courts decide antitrust cases over allegedly anticompetitive conduct that occurred wholly outside of Texas? The intuitive and correct answer is no. In the way, unfortunately, lay confounding factors: the liability explosion, needlessly vexing questions of antitrust jurisdiction, and above all the wretched condition of the constitutional and common law rules that govern state-to-state relations in our federal order.

On February 18, 2005, President George W. Bush signed into law the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) of 2005, the most significant civil justice reform of his administration. Has it succeeded in curbing abusive class actions? Because litigation tactics are dynamic, the long-term answer will depend in part on the plaintiffs bar's response.

Private securities class actions under Rule 10b-5 of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) were created by the courts, not authorized by Congress. For the last thirty years, the Supreme Court and Congress have made strenuous efforts to control and limit these suits, with only limited success. On a cost-benefit basis, a compensation system like this is difficult to justify.

Rollover Economics: Arbitrary and Capricious Product Liability Regimes
by Ted Frank
It went generally unnoticed last November when the California Supreme Court refused to review an intermediate court�s decision in Buell-Wilson v. Ford Motor Co. But then again, it went generally unnoticed when a jury awarded an arbitrary $368 million in damages in that case, when the trial judge reduced that verdict to an arbitrary $150 million judgment, and when an intermediate appellate court reduced that figure to an arbitrary $82.6 million (which, with interest, works out to over $100 million). Products liability verdicts have become so run-of-the-mill that even nine-digit verdicts and their aftermath receive only local or specialty press coverage, with cursory national coverage. But Buell-Wilson demonstrates much that is wrong with the current liability regime, including the fact that the media is so jaded by litigation abuse that a $368 million verdict is barely newsworthy.

The plaintiffs� bar and media have claimed early �success� in obesity and lifestyle litigation; however, several fundamentally different kinds of lawsuits are being grouped under one �obesity litigation� umbrella, and each one has different policy implications for obesity and for the legal system. A closer look shows that the plaintiffs� successes have been thin gruel and that the obesity litigation to date has been much more successful in transferring wealth to attorneys than in advancing legitimate public policy concerns.

The Milberg Weiss Indictment and H.R. 5491
Testimony before the House Committee on Financial Services, Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises

AEI Liability Project Director Ted Frank testified on June 28, 2006 as to how the recent Milberg Weiss indictment illustrates the problems of securities class action litigation. His testimony goes on to explain how Rep. Richard Baker's bill, the Securities Litigation Attorney Accountability and Transparency Act (SLAATA, H.R. 5491) would be a step in the right direction, but only that.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) is a colossal failure, poorly conceived and hastily enacted during a regulatory panic. Evidence suggests that the market has estimated that SOX will impose huge indirect costs on top of substantial direct costs. A largely overlooked concern is the act�s potential to turn into a litigation time bomb: the first major market correction will likely become a feast for trial lawyers. SOX�s defenders assert that the business world is better off now than before SOX, but the relevant question is whether it is better because of SOX. Existing institutions could have responded to any problems without a vast one-size-fits-all regulation from the federal government. To see the press release for this AEI Liability Study, click here.

The Vioxx Litigation: Part I and Part II
by Ted Frank
Part I of this AEI Working Paper looks at the history of Vioxx and asks questions about potential over-deterrence from having manufacturers bear the full measure of the social cost of drugs through strict products liability or failure-to-warn claims. Part II goes on to look at the problems that the Vioxx cases present for the litigation system as a whole.

Harm-Less Lawsuits?
by Michael Greve
Consumer class actions often generate billion-dollar verdicts or settlements even when the plaintiffs' class is composed entirely of individuals whose harms are purely hypothetical. Consumers who were injured are explicitly excluded from the class. One example: plaintiffs were awarded $10.1 billion for purchasing Marlboro and Cambridge Lights, not because they were injured by them, but because they were misled to believe that they were safe. In Harm-Less Lawsuits?, Michael Greve describes the origins of consumer class actions and analyzes their theoretical and practical problems.

The Supreme Court's Business
October 27

As the Supreme Court opens its October Term, the AEI Legal Center will host its annual review and preview of the U.S. Supreme Court�s 2007 and 2008 Terms. As in prior years, a panel of distinguished experts and practitioners will discuss the key business cases, which constitute an ever-growing share of the Court�s civil docket. Recent regulatory and financial crises bring increased urgency to the examination of the justices� future course. Will Congress and the Executive finally create a stable regulatory framework, or will there be uncontrolled litigation and regulation over past misconduct, real and imagined? What role is the Court likely to play?

For more information, video, and conference materials, please see http://www.aei.org/event1828.

The past fifty years have seen a striking rise in judicial supervision of education. From race to speech, from religion to school funding, from discipline to special education, few realms of education policy have escaped the courtroom. Predictably, much controversy has ensued. Supporters of education litigation contend that the courts are essential to secure student (and civil) rights and needs, while critics insist that the courts distort policy and that the mere threat of litigation undermines the authority of teachers and administrators. Please join us at this landmark conference, where a distinguished cast of scholars and panelists will appraise the judiciary�s role in K�12 education and discuss the implications for policymakers, scholars, jurists, and education reformers. This conference is cosponsored by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

On both sides of the Atlantic, �citizenship� is the subject of vital and often contentious policy debates. In the United States, a nation famously founded on a creed rather than blood ties, the question of what it means to be an American citizen has always been central to the country�s self-understanding, and the citizenship question is closely tied to salient political debates over immigration, naturalization, and �identity politics.� European countries and the European Union (EU) wrestle with (at least) equally profound questions. Given that there is no European citizenship in any robust sense, can it be constructed--and if so, how and on what basis? Can there be democratic European institutions without European citizens? Should formerly sovereign nations tolerate Islamic law in some domains, perhaps on the principle that allows EU members to maintain their own laws on cultural and other matters--or would that step further compromise the promise of a common European identity and citizenship?

The Future of Federalism
September 12, 2008

The American system of federalism is at the heart of many disagreements over important constitutional and public policy issues. Changes in all three branches of government and recent Supreme Court decisions raise questions about the future scope of federal-state relationships: How should we balance state and federal rights? Should the courts take a more active role in limiting federal power, or should they instead leave the federal-state balance to the political process? Can we make better progress on these issues by allowing states to pursue their own policies independently? Or should the federal government take a more active role?

For more information, video, and conference materials, please see http://www.aei.org/event1770.

A Speech by Attorney General Michael Mukasey
July 21, 2008, 11:00-11:45 a.m.

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey gave an address on national security and provided his perspective on the legal approach in the war with al Qaeda.

For more information, video, and conference materials, please see https://www.aei.org/event1762.

At this AEI event, speakers will weigh the impact of international antitrust regulation and debate the wisdom and necessity of U.S. action to protect American business and strengthen the foundations of free trade. A panel discussion will feature Thomas O. Barnett, assistant attorney general for antitrust at the Department of Justice; Deborah Platt Majoras, until recently the chair of the Federal Trade Commission; and international antitrust expert Theodore W. Ullyot of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. AEI visiting scholar John Yoo will moderate.

For more information, video, and conference materials, please see www.aei.org/event1732.

Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman and a spinoff firm led by William Lerach dominated securities class actions over the last twenty years. But in 2006 and 2007, prosecutors indicted the Milberg firm, Lerach, Mel Weiss, David Bershad, and Steven Schulman for paying kickbacks to �class representative� plaintiffs, who were supposed to protect the interests of the class over those of the attorneys. The indictments solidified the argument that class representatives in securities class actions were not effective principals overseeing the work of their attorneys. On May 19, Lerach reported to prison in Lompoc, California; on June 2, Mel Weiss will be sentenced. But even as all of the attorneys have pleaded guilty, many argue that the crimes in the indictments were victimless. Did these kickbacks affect the amount of money that absent class members received from settlements? Did Milberg Weiss�s inappropriate relationship with their lead clients allow them to receive higher attorneys� fees at the expense of investors? What does the Milberg Weiss indictment say about the benefits to investors of securities class actions? Will Democrats heed House minority leader John Boehner�s call for congressional hearings?

At this AEI event, law professor Michael Perino presented his new paper, �The Milberg Weiss Prosecution: No Harm, No Foul?��published as part of the AEI Legal Center�s Briefly series�which seeks to objectively answer these questions. Using a database of approximately 730 class action settlements and fee awards, Perino examined the Milberg Weiss indictment in detail and analyzes whether these kickback payments harmed class members. AEI�s Peter J. Wallison and AEI Legal Center director Theodore H. Frank commented on the paper and the Milberg Weiss indictment. Frank moderated.

At this AEI Legal Center event, experts on both law and health care will present papers on the law, economics, medicine, and public policy of off-label marketing, discussing everything from the abuse of class action mechanisms to implications for the First Amendment and medical malpractice. Speakers include former Food and Drug Administration chief counsel Daniel Troy; former Cephalon general counsel John Osborn; former deputy attorney general George Terwilliger; principal deputy assistant attorney general and acting assistant attorney general for the Civil Division Jeff Bucholtz; attorneys Brian Anderson, James Beck, Mark Herrmann, Richard Samp, and Kyle Sampson; law professor Margaret Johns; and AEI scholars John E. Calfee, Ted Frank, and Scott Gottlieb.

At this book forum, Utah State University political science professor Anthony A. Peacock discussed his new book, Deconstructing the Republic: Voting Rights, the Supreme Court, and the Founders' Republicanism Reconsidered (AEI Press, April 2008), which argues that the VRA's judicial evolution has damaged our democratic form of government by institutionalizing political identities based on un-American conceptions of race and ethnicity, eliminating the common good from the political framework. Michael Carvin of Jones Day and Daniel Lowenstein of UCLA responded. AEI's Henry Olsen moderated.

The proliferation of international policymaking organizations has intensified and institutionalized the influence of global governance. Suprastate and nonstate actors, such as the United Nations (UN), NGOs, and international financial institutions, have risen in prominence and power, bringing with them internationalist agendas that are challenging the abilities of nation states to determine their own domestic policies and priorities. As the lines between state sovereignty and global governance become increasingly blurred, who should decide what is right for the world?

The imposition of the punishment of execution for certain heinous crimes has been a matter of intense controversy in the United States and especially in its legal system. Although the Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty for over thirty years, battles over its application in particular cases and circumstances or to particular groups of persons has roiled our jurisprudence and strained our court systems over the same time. The phrase �death is different� has come to embody arguments over ways in which our law should or should not be altered or distorted in dealing with death penalty cases. Judge Danny J. Boggs will consider the state of U.S. jurisprudence on the death penalty, its application by the courts, and the extent to which the death penalty is--or should be--approached by courts in a way different from any other area of law.

In the span of a generation, conservative intellectuals and activists have succeeded in mounting a potent challenge to liberal legal theories that once held unquestioned sway over America�s courts and law schools. They have built a robust infrastructure of legal advocacy groups, think tanks, and networking organizations that have shifted the courts toward a more conservative understanding of the law. In a just-published but already widely acclaimed book, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement (Princeton University Press, 2008), political scientist Steven M. Teles of the University of Maryland provides a compelling account of the movement�s rise to power and influence. Teles presented his insights at an event that is part of the Brookings Institution�s �Governing Ideas� book series. Jack Balkin of Yale Law School and Michael S. Greve of AEI commented. William Galston of the Brookings Institution moderated.

What is the appropriate relationship between federal regulation and state tort law? What are the pros and cons of preemption, and what impact will these cases have on product liability litigation and product safety? At this event, former FDA chief counsel Daniel Troy, New York University law professor Catherine Sharkey, and Brian Wolfman of Public Citizen joined AEI�s Michael S. Greve to discuss four cases on the Supreme Court's preemption docket this term, Wyeth v. Levine, Warner-Lambert v. Kent, Riegel v. Medtronic, and Altria v. Good. AEI�s Theodore H. Frank moderated.

In November 2006, the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, a group of academics and market specialists, issued its interim report, the first research report on the apparent migration of public offerings by international companies from the United States to London and other overseas markets. The interim report analyzed the causes of this trend and suggested remedies. In a second report, published in early December, the committee updated and expanded upon the interim report�s initial findings. The new report shows an even more pronounced trend away from the U.S. securities markets. Speakers at this conference--including committee executive director Hal S. Scott, former Securities and Exchange Commission member Roel Campos, Donald C. Langevoort of Georgetown University Law Center, and Heidi M. Schooner of the Catholic University of America�s Columbus School of Law--reviewed the findings in the committee�s new report and consider the possible causes of the U.S. public securities markets� relative decline.

For more information, video, and conference materials, please see www.aei.org/event1662.

The Gauer Distinguished Lecture in Law and Public Policy is a major scholarly discourse by a national or world leader. Its primary purpose is to encourage debate by presenting, publishing, and disseminating original work on an important constitutional, legal, or public policy issue of the day. The 2007 Gauer Distinguished Lecture was given by the Honorable Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr. Cox's subject will be "The Rise of Sovereign Business."

For more information, video, and conference materials, please see www.aei.org/event1599.

Days before the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on Stoneridge v. Scientific-Atlanta, a panel that includes former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt and AEI Scholar Ted Frank explored the arguments and implications of the case.

At this annual AEI Legal Center Supreme Court Briefing, panelists analyzed the business-related cases from October Term 2006 and the upcoming October Term 2007.

In a June conference at AEI, Kenneth Lehn and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh presented a paper suggesting that risk-taking by U.S. corporations has declined since the adoption of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The Lehn paper compared U.S. companies with similar companies in the United Kingdom and found a reduction in risk-taking in the U.S. group in a number of dimensions. Now, a study by Katherine Litvak of the University of Texas at Austin School of Law compares foreign companies that are cross-listed in the U.S--and thus subject to Sarbanes-Oxley--with similar companies from the same countries that are not required to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley. Like Lehn et al., she found that since the adoption of Sarbanes-Oxley, companies subject to it are avoiding the risk-taking ultimately responsible for economic growth. Speakers at this conference will review the Litvak study and its significance for the Sarbanes-Oxley debate.

Speakers at this event discussed the domestic impacts of decisions of international tribunals.

With the Patent Reform Act of 2007 currently pending in Congress, AEI�s John E. Calfee and Claude Barfield discussed their new AEI Press book, Biotechnology and the Patent System (forthcoming), on the biotech patent process. Panels on patent reform issues and hte effects of patent law on biotechnology and university research followed.