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Law and Econ Ctr gmu

Note that gmu has env law horner foia

 9/20 i am expanding this to the phrase/approach libtard ~ Keynes

GMU Foundation Law and Econ Center $1,170,000  GP 2013

MERRI OK

see KOCH-ADEMIA

SEE OLIN

SEE ORIETATION JUNKETS

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see LEC gmu raga

3 DC circuit on adv bd?

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Henry N. Butler

:{:{Henry G. Manne Professor of Law and Economics}:

Executive Director, Law & Economics Center}:

E-mail: hnbutler@gmu.edu

Phone: 703.993.8644

Henry N. Butler is the Henry G. Manne Professor of Law and Economics and Executive Director of the Law & Economics Center at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School.  For over 30 years, Professor Butler has developed and led educational programs that teach the basics of economics, finance, accounting, statistics, and the scientific method to federal and state judges, as well as other legal professionals and scholars. He served as Dean of the law school from 2015 through 2020 and achieved unparalleled success including raising record-breaking gifts, establishing a host of new centers, institutes, and clinics, boosting the law school’s national and international reputation, and naming the school after the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

From 2007 to 2010, Professor Butler served as the first Executive Director of the Searle Center on Law, Regulation, and Economic Growth at Northwestern University School of Law. He has held prior appointments at the Brookings Institution, Chapman University, the University of Kansas, the University of Chicago, and Texas A&M University. From 1986 to 1993, he was a law professor at George Mason and, during that period, also served as an Associate Dean and Director of the Law & Economics Center.

He received an MA and PhD in economics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and a JD from the University of Miami School of Law. He received his bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Richmond.

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Paige V. Butler

Deputy Executive Director, Law & Economics Center

Director, Judicial Education Program

E-mail: pbutler2@gmu.edu

Phone: 703.993.8132

Paige V. Butler is deputy executive director of the Law & Economics Center and director of the Judicial Education Program. She has over twenty years of experience in judicial education, development, and project leadership. Prior to her appointment, she served as associate dean of advancement & alumni relations for the Antonin Scalia Law School and filled various positions at the Law & Economics Center, including as deputy executive director. Paige has also held positions at Northwestern University School of Law, the Brookings Institution, Chapman University, and the University of Kansas. Before moving to the academic environment, Paige practiced law for ten years as corporate counsel to a large financial institution. She holds a JD from the University of Kansas as well as BS degrees in accounting and business management.

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2019

Liberty & Law Center provides training and mentorship to aspiring First Amendment advocates at Scalia Law. Through programs like the Free Speech Clinic and the Public Interest Litigation Program, Scalia law students explore the meaning of individual liberty in our modern legal system. The Center also hosts reading groups, which are open to all members of Scalia Law, designed to facilitate a larger discussion about the relationship between individual liberty, constitutionalism, and the rule of law. In spring 2019, the Center launched Discussion Over Division, a program which fosters civil discourse between students with differing political perspectives. The repertoire of programs aims to provide the education and hands-on training needed to enhance students’ understanding of the law’s impact on individual liberty.

The Liberty & Law Center is cohosting "A Conversation withJudge Sutton" with the Federalist Society on September 19. Contact liberty@gmu.edu for more information.

Global Antitrust Institute (GAI) was founded in 2013 as an LEC program by Senior Court Circuit Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg (Senior Status, DC Circuit) and Professor Bruce Kobayashi (currently, Director of the Bureau of Economics at the FTC). The GAI spun off from the LEC in 2015 when Professor Joshua Wright returned to Scalia Law after two-and-a-half years as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. Current GAI Programs include: Economics Institute for Competition Judges, Economics Institute for Competition Enforcement Officials, and Competition Advocacy Programs....

Founded in 2012, the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property (CPIP) is a catalyst for research on a “property rights” approach to intellectual property through a national network of scholars and the hosting of numerous programs and conferences. CPIP’s Executive Director is Professor Sean O’Connor who recently joined Scalia Law from the University of Washington School of Law where he was the Boeing International Professor of Law. Professor O'Connor comes to Scalia Law with a strong background in tech transfer and the business community.

How does your Center intersect with the federal government and/or the private sector?

CPIP interacts with the federal government through our events, clinics, and policy work. We co-host conferences and educational programs with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the U.S. Copyright Office, and the Smithsonian's Lemelson Center for the Study on Invention and Innovation. CPIP’s staff and network of scholars also regularly participate in Hill briefings and panels, help inform policy makers and staffers, and testify before Congress on a number of IP issues....

founded in 2015 by Professor (now Judge) Neomi Rao, the C. Boyden Gray Center is dedicated to exploring the foundational concepts and actual practices of the administrative state. The Gray Center sponsors an interesting range of research and public policy conferences for academics and the Washington public policy community.

How does your Center intersect with the federal government and/or the private sector?

The C. Boyden Gray Center for the Administrative State was founded to promote scholarship and debate on the modern administrative state. In other words, we exist to study the modern federal government’s most significant lawmaking engine, and the ways in which it affects all Americans. Our research roundtables and public conferences bring together diverse mixes of policymakers, scholars, judges, and practitioners.

What are some examples of the Center’s work?

In fall 2018, the Gray Center convened a conference on how to reform the modern veterans’ benefits process. Panels of scholars, practitioners, and government officials focused on how the Department of Veterans Affairs and the federal courts might help to modernize and improve veterans’ access to their benefits. The event was highlighted by a keynote address by Judge Mary Schoelen of the U.S. Court for Veterans Claims.

In spring 2019, the Gray Center hosted its third annual Capitol Hill Conference at the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill. Panels of scholars discussed Congress’s constitutional legislative powers, for an audience that included private practitioners and government officials...

In spring 2019, the LEC’s Program on Financial Regulation & Technology hosted a day-long policy conference on Smart Regulation and the Future of Financial Services, that featured a who’s who of the banking, finance, technology, and regulatory community.Keynote addresses were given by Securities and Exchange Commissioner Hester Pierce and Craig Phillips, Counselor to the U.S. Treasury Secretary. Other speakers included representatives of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, FDIC, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, along with senior executives from leading global financial companies, legal practitioners, and noted academics.

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But the all-expenses-paid event hosted by George Mason University’s Law & Economics Center in Arlington, Virginia, served another purpose: It was the first of several seminars designed to promote “skepticism” of scientific evidence among likely candidates for the 140-plus federal judgeships President Trump will fill over the next four years.

Louis Anthony “Tony” Cox Jr.

Read more about how air quality is the new frontier for climate-change skeptics long tied to API »

The lone science instructor was Louis Anthony Cox Jr., a risk analyst with deep industry ties whose recent appointment as chair of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee drew condemnation in public-health circles.Since 1988, Cox has consulted for the American Petroleum Institute, a lobby group that spent millions to dispute the cancer-causing properties of benzene, an ingredient in gasoline, and is now working to discredit the science on smog-causing ozone. He’s also testified on behalf of the chemical industry and done research for tobacco giant Philip Morris.

For a $4,000 honorarium, Cox delivered two closed-door lectures at George Mason: “a primer on the scientific method,” followed by a session aimed at “understanding what science can and cannot do.”  Included in his presentation were slides urging judges to be wary of EPA science on fine particles — a pollutant he has been researching for API. 

The symposium included a “mandatory” dinner at Capitol Hill’s upscale Charlie Palmer Steak, whose website says it “moves the political power meetings out of the back room and into private dining spaces.” Events such as the symposium are one way Big Oil is trying to impart free-market values to judges and attorneys general as the industry gears up for legal battles on multiple fronts.

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only 1 of 5?!

Past Events – Attorneys General Education Program

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http://web.archive.org/web/20120329180756/http://old.:{mediatransparency.org:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:/issue.php?issueID=8

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iSSUE: Law and Economics Movement

Law and Economics Movement

Law and Economics is a movement-within-the-movement funded and led by the conservative philanthropies described in this report.

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:{From [The Strategic Philanthropy of Conservative Foundations, NCRP, July, 1997]}:

Law and Economics funding

Much of the grant money going to top academic institutions supported the establishment or expansion of law and economics programs, which conservative foundations, particularly Olin and Scaife, began to support heavily in the 1980s. Out of the $23 million awarded (over the three years of the NCRP report) to develop or expand specific academic programs, $16.5 million supported law and economics programs and law schools, with major awards to the University of Chicago ($3.3 million), Harvard University ($3.2 million), the University of Virginia ($2.3 million), Yale University ($2 million), George Mason University ($1.4 million), Cornell University ($1.2 million) and Stanford University ($711,578). Such support prompted the release of a 1993 report by the Alliance for Justice that examined conservative foundations' efforts to reshape legal theory and practice in ways more congenial to commercial or corporate interests .7

According to the report, conservative funders helped to institutionalize the "Chicago school" version of law and economics. In effect, their funding did much to create a law and economics "movement" which, because of its anti-regulatory orientation, was favorably perceived by conservative donors as potentially leading to a more predictable legal environment for business. Referring to Chicago school theorists (including Richard Posner and Henry Manne), the Alliance for Justice report states that:

They [ Law and Economics proponents ] assert that the law's fundamental goal should be to maximize the wealth of society by promoting the efficient use of scarce resources. Chicago Schoolers bring to law and economics theory a marked disdain for governmental regulation, arguing that such intervention interferes with the natural tendency of resources to gravitate toward their most valuable uses in the market. They believe the law should mimic the market by seeking only 'efficient' legal outcomes, those whose economic benefits outweigh their economic costs. Thus conceived, the law is not an exponent and promoter of constitutional or ethical tenets; rather, it is a mere supplement to the market: a necessary but minor vehicle for perfecting [ so-called ] market-like solutions.'"8

Others working within the law and economics tradition take the position that the field is neither intrinsically "liberal" nor "conservative," arguing instead that it offers a useful and important tool (economic analysis) with which to consider a variety of legal problems.9^ Still, law and economics scholars working within a more progressive framework acknowledge that efficiency, rather than equity, remains the field's core concern.

Moreover, given that the real world application of law and economics principles will depend on the matrix and ideological orientation of existing institutions, conservative foundations' efforts to create and expand law and economics programs must be evaluated against the totality of their grantmaking investments, particularly in the legal arena. Those investments have included $16.5 million (1992-1994) in law-related funding within the academic sector, primarily to support law and economics curricula as well as an additional $10.5 million to support pro-market public interest law firms, pro-bono legal networks, training seminars for federal judges, and law student and alumni organizations dedicated to advancing conservative philosophical and legal principles within law schools, the judiciary and policymaking circles. Thus, $27 million was directly devoted to legal institutions and training programs.

This $27 million does not, however, reflect the general operating or program-specific support provided by conservative foundations to national think tanks engaged in judicial reform efforts. A prime example is the Manhattan Institute, which initiated a very active Judicial Studies Program to influence national legal debates, particularly over civil law and tort reform.

  1. Alliance for Justice, Justice for Sale: Shortchanging the Public Interest for Private Gain(Washington, D.C.: Alliance for Justice, 1993).
  1. Ibid., p. 24.
  1. Rose-Ackerman, Susan, Rethinking the Progressive Agenda: The Reform of the American Regulatory State (New York: Free Press, 1992)

Jedediah Purdy

American Prospect

February 1, 2001

The Chicago Acid Bath

The Impoverished Logic of "Law and Economics"

Read about the cruel, market-serving, people-denying legal theory called “Law and Economics,” fundedby the conservative philanthropies, that is helping to transform American law by elevating the idea of “wealth-maximization” to the goal of the law.

Read the full report >

issues:

RELATED STORIES

Washington Post

June 30, 2000

Judges' Free Trips Go Unreported

Federal judges took more than a dozen expense-paid trips to seminars put on by conservative groups but failed to disclose the resort trips on their annual financial reports, as required by federal ethics laws.

Read the full report >

Antitrust Law and Economics Review

January 1, 1997

JUDICIAL SEMINARS: ECONOMICS, ACADEMIA, AND CORPORATE MONEY IN AMERICA

(good description of the ethical problems for judges in re the Law and Economics movement)

Read the full report >

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ELATED STORIES

TripsForJudges.org

Documents the "education" of federal and state judges with an interactive, searchable database of judge's trips.

Grants for "Law and Economics"

Search the database for grants that have the word "judge" in them

Efforts by the right to "educate" state & federal judges

Eric M. Weiss

Washington Post

May 25, 2006

Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE) and George Mason University's Law & Economics Center lied about corporate sponsorship

Free trips for judges paid for by tobacco, oil and other corporate interests

Two organizations that have provided free trips to hundreds of federal judges received large contributions from tobacco, oil and other corporate interests, according to documents released yesterday.

The Montana-based Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE) and George Mason University's Law & Economics Center previously said corporate money does not pay for the judges' seminars or declined to disclose their donors.

Read the full report >

Abner Mikva

New York Times

August 28, 2000

The Wooing of Our Judges

Abner Mikva decries the "Educating" of federal judges at posh resorts by conservative foundations:

"...judges listened to speakers whose overwhelming message was that regulation should be limited -- that the free market should be relied upon to protect the environment, for example, or that the "takings" clause of the Constitution should be interpreted to prohibit rules against development in environmentally sensitive places."

Read the full report >

Washington Post

June 25, 2000

Report Links Environmental Rulings, Judges' Free Trips

Federal judges who attended expenses-paid seminars that favor "free market" solutions to environmental problems struck down protections in some of the decade's significant environmental cases, according to a study of the increasingly popular judicial trips.

Read the full report >

Salon.com

March 1, 1999

Tipping the antitrust scales

How the right helped make the federal courts safe for Microsoft

(contextualizes the Law and Economics funding -- compares judges who go to opulent "seminars" with their court rulings-- ed.)

Read the full report >

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...The man who put his mark on the Olin foundation more than its namesake, or even Simon, was its executive director, Michael Joyce, a fierce former liberal who had become an acolyte of Kristol's.A friend of Joyce's said that he believed philanthropy was about power and that those with great fortunes needed political capos like him to tell them how to wield it. Joyce was a brawler who wanted to take on America's liberal establishment, not just supplement it in some milquetoast way. In the words of Ralph Benko, a libertarian blogger for Forbes, "Joyce was a true radical. He was inspired byAntonio Gramsci. He wanted to effect radical transformation."

In Miller's view, Joyce was "an intellectual among activists, and an activist among intellectuals. He understood how the world of ideas influenced the real world." Joyce was characteristically more blunt. "My style," he said, "was the style of the toddler and the adolescent: fight, fight, fight, rest, get up, fight, fight, fight. No one ever accused me of being pleasant. I made a difference. It was acknowledged by friend and foe."

Joining Joyce wasJames Piereson, a thoughtful, soft-spoken neoconservative whose path to the Olin foundation had also run through Irving Kristol. Piereson had befriended the Kristol family at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught government and political theory alongside Irving's son, Bill. Both had felt marginalized by their more liberal peers.Having closely observed America's academic intelligentsia, Piereson concluded that the foundation needed to "penetrate" the most elite institutions"because they were emulated by other colleges and universities of lesser stature." As Hillel Fradkin, who also worked at the Olin foundation, put it, "The only way you're going to change the debate in this country is by looking to those schools. Giving money to conservative outposts won't get much done."

What emerged was a strategy they called the "beachhead" theory. The aim, as Piereson later described it in an essay offering advice to fellow conservative philanthropists, was to establish conservative cells, or "beachheads," at "the most influential schools in order to gain the greatest leverage." The formula required subtlety, indirection, and perhaps even some misdirection.

The key, Piereson explained, was to fund the conservative intelligentsia in such a way that it would not "raise questions about academic integrity." Instead of trying to earmark a chair or dictate a faculty appointment, both of which he noted were bound to "generate fierce controversy," he suggested that conservative donors look for like-minded faculty members whose influence could be enlarged by outside funding. In time, such a professor could administer an expanded program. But Piereson warned that it was "essential for the integrity and reputation of the programs that they be defined not by ideological points of view."

To overtly acknowledge "pre-ordained conclusions" would doom a program. Instead of saying the program was designed to "demonstrate the falsity of Marxism" or to promote "free enterprise," he advised that it was better to "define programs in terms of fields of study, [like the] John M. Olin Fellowships in Military History." He wrote, "Often a program can be given a philosophical or principled identity by giving it the name of an important historical figure, such as the James Madison Program on American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University." (Indeed, after years of trial and error, the Olin foundation funded Princeton's Madison Program with $525,000 in start-up grants in 2000. Run by Robert George, an outspoken social and religious conservative, the program serves as the beau ideal of the "beachhead" theory. As a friend of George's described him to The Nation in 2006, he is "a savvy right-wing operative, boring from within the liberal infrastructure.")

Piereson warned conservative philanthropists that taking the liberal out of liberal-arts education would require patience and cunning. As a former academic himself, he knew how politically charged a frontal assault would be. Rather than openly trying to overhaul academe over night, he suggested, "perhaps we should think instead about challenging it by adding new voices." As he put it, "This may well be the best means of changing the college culture, for a few powerful voices of criticism may at some point bring the entire ideological house of cards crashing down upon itself."

IF THE OLIN FOUNDATION was less than transparent about its mission, it was not for the first time. Between 1958 and 1966, it secretly served as a bank for the Central Intelligence Agency. During these eight years, the CIA laundered $1.95 million through the foundation. Olin, according to Miller, regarded his undercover role as part of his patriotic duty. Many of the government funds went to anti-Communist intellectuals and publications. But in 1967, the press exposed the covert propaganda operation, triggering a political furor and causing the CIA to fold the program. The CIA money at the Olin foundation, which was not publicized at the time, disappeared as quietly as it had arrived. The idea of using the private foundation to fund ideologically aligned intellectuals, however, persisted.

The Olin foundation invested in William F. Buckley Jr., whose television show, Firing Line, the foundation supported. It also funded Allan Bloom, author of the best-selling slam from the right at American higher education, The Closing of the American Mind (in which Bloom also lashed out at rock music as a "nonstop, commercially prepackaged masturbation fantasy"). The foundation also supported Dinesh D'Souza, author of Illiberal Education, which blasted "political correctness," castigating rules requiring sensitivity to women and minorities as the overreaching of liberal thought police.

In addition, the Olin foundation funded professors at leading universities all over the country, including Harvard's Harvey C. Mansfield and Samuel P. Huntington.[BANNON] It donated $3.3 million to Mansfield's Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard, which emphasized a conservative interpretation of American government, and the foundation donated $8.4 million to Huntington's John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, which inculcated a hawkish approach to foreign policy and national security.

Through these carefully curated programs, the foundation trained the next generation of conservatives, whom Joyce likened to "a wine collection" that would grow more valuable as its members aged, increasing in stature and power. The foundation kept track of those who passed through Huntington's Olin program, proudly noting that many went into public service and academe. Between 1990 and 2001, 56 of the 88 Olin fellows at the Harvard program continued on to teach at the University of Chicago, Cornell, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Harvard, MIT, Penn, and Yale. Many others became public figures in government, think tanks, and the media.

In all, by the time it closed its doors in 2005, the Olin foundation had supported 11 separate programs at Harvard, burnishing the foundation's name and ideas and proving that even the best-endowed American university would allow an outside ideological group to build "beachheads," so long as the project was properly packaged and funded.

On top of these programs, the foundation doled out $8 million to more than a hundred John M. Olin faculty fellows. These funds enabled scores of young academics to take the time needed to do research and write in order to further their careers. The roster of recipients includes John Yoo, the legal scholar who went on to become the author of the George W. Bush administration's controversial "torture memo" legalizing the American government's brutalization of terror suspects.

Without the rigorous peer-review standards required by prestigious academic publications, the Olin foundation was able to inject into the mainstream a number of works whose scholarship was debatable at best. For example, Olin-foundation funds enabled John R. Lott Jr., then an Olin fellow at the University of Chicago, to write his influential book More Guns, Less Crime. In the work, Lott argued that more guns actually reduce crime and that the legalization of concealed weapons would make citizens safer.

Politicians advocating weaker gun-control laws frequently cited Lott's findings. But according to Adam Winkler, the author of Gunfight, Lott's scholarship was suspect. Winkler wrote that "Lott's claimed source for this information was 'national surveys,"' which under questioning he revised to just one survey that he and research assistants had conducted. When asked to provide the data, Winkler recounts, Lott said he had lost it in a computer crash. Asked for any evidence of the survey, writes Winkler, "Lott said he had no such evidence." (Proving that the recipients of Olin funds weren't ideologically monolithic, Winkler, too, had received funds from the foundation.)

Another Olin-funded book that made headlines and ended in accusations of intellectual dishonesty was David Brock's The Real Anita Hill, to which the foundation gave a small research stipend. In the book, Brock defended the Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas by accusing Hill of fabricating her sworn testimony against him during his Senate confirmation hearings. Later, though, Brock recanted, admitting that he had been wrong. He apologized for the book and said that he had been deceived by conservative sources who had misled him.

Still, the combined impact of the Olin grantees was "a triumph," according to Miller. Writing in 2003, he enthused that "a small handful of foundations have essentially provided the conservative movement with its venture capital." He noted that in contrast to the days when Lionel Trilling had declared conservatism over, "conservative ideas are in broad circulation, and many believe they are now ascendant." He added, "If the conservative intellectual movement were a Nascar race, and if the scholars and organizations who compose it were drivers zipping around a race track, virtually all of their vehicles would sport an Olin bumper sticker." In time, the Olin foundation's success in minting right-leaning thinkers drew the envy of the left. "On the right, they understood that books matter," says Steve Wasserman, executive editor at large for Yale University Press, who formerly tried but failed to get wealthy liberal donors to match the intellectual investments being made by conservatives. "I remember meeting at a restaurant in California with some of the major Democratic operatives and funders, Margery Tabankin, Stanley Sheinbaum and Gary David Goldberg. I was telling them that they needed to figure out a way to fund books on the left. But books aren't sexy. They weren't interested. They didn't think that in the political culture it mattered. The Democrats were hostage to star personalities and electoral politics."

THE OLIN FOUNDATION'S most significant beachheads, however, were established in America's law schools, where it bankrolled a new approach to jurisprudence known as Law and Economics.Lewis Powell, in an influential 1971 memo, had argued that "the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change." The Olin foundation agreed. As the courts expanded consumer, labor, and environmental rights and demanded racial and sexual equality and greater workplace safety, conservatives in business were desperate to find more legal leverage. Law and Economics became their tool.

As a discipline, Law and Economics was seen at first as a fringe theory embraced largely by libertarian mavericks until the Olin foundation spent $68 million underwriting its growth. Like an academic Johnny Appleseed, the Olin foundation underwrote 83 percent of the costs for all Law and Economics programs in American law schools between the years of 1985 and 1989. Over all, it scattered more than $10 million to Harvard, $7 million to Yale and Chicago, and over $2 million to Columbia, Cornell, Georgetown, and the University of Virginia. Miller writes, "John Olin, in fact, was prouder of Law and Economics than any other program he supported."

Following Piereson's cautious playbook, the program's title conveyed no ideology. Law and Economics stresses the need to analyze laws, including government regulations, not just for their fairness but also for their economic impact. Its proponents describe it in apolitical terms as bringing"efficiency"and "clarity" to the law, rather than relying on fuzzy, hard-to-quantify concepts like social justice.

Piereson, however, admitted that the beauty of the program was that it was a stealth political attack and that the country's best law schools didn't grasp this and therefore didn't block the ideological punch it packed. "I saw it as a way into the law schools--I probably shouldn't confess that," he told The New York Times in 2005. "Economic analysis tends to have conservatizing effects."

In a later interview with the Johns Hopkins University political scientist Steven M. Teles, Piereson added that he would have preferred to fund a conservative constitutional-law program, but had the foundation tried such a direct political challenge, it probably would have been barred entry to America's best law schools."If you said to a dean that you wanted to fund conservative constitutional law, he would reject the idea out of hand. But if you said you wanted to support Law and Economics, he would be much more open to the idea," he confided. "Law and Economics is neutral, but it has a philosophical thrust in the direction of free markets and limited government. That is, like many disciplines, it seems neutral, but it isn't in fact."

The Olin foundation's route into the country's best law schools was circuitous. The foundation began by financially supporting an early leading figure in Law and Economics, the libertarian Henry Manne, an acolyte of the Chicago school of free-market economics. Brilliant, impolitic, and an ideological purist, Manne "was considered a marginal, even eccentric character in the legal academy," according to Teles, when the Olin foundation first started funding him in the early 1970s. To the frustration of the foundation, he didn't teach at high-prestige schools.

In 1985, however, the foundation seized a golden opportunity to establish a beachhead at the pinnacle of legal prestige. That year, Harvard Law School was riven by controversy. Leftist professors were urging students to "sabotage" corporate law firms from within. Conservative professors and alumni were scandalized. The ruckus attracted national press coverage in The New Yorker and elsewhere. Among the many outraged Harvard Law School alumni was one of the Olin foundation's trustees, George Gillespie. Sensing an opening, he contacted a conservative Harvard Law School professor, Phillip Areeda, whom he had been in school with, and offered the foundation's help.

The Olin foundation took the initiative, and Harvard took the cash. Out of this ideological pact came the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business at Harvard Law School, on which the foundation ultimately spent $18 million. The donation was the biggest in Olin's history. Harvard's president at the time, Derek Bok, was reportedly delighted at the new source of funding and the opportunity to soothe the disgruntled alumni.

After Harvard approved Law and Economics, other schools soon followed. By 1990, nearly 80 law schools taught the subject. Olin fellows in Law and Economics, meanwhile, began to beat a path to the top of the legal profession, winning Supreme Court clerkships at a rate of approximately one each year, starting in 1985. Many of the adherents were outstanding lawyers and not all were conservative, but they were changing the prevailing legal culture.

By 1986, Bruce Ackerman, then a professor at Columbia Law School, called Law and Economics "the most important thing in legal education since the birth of Harvard Law School." Teles, in his 2008 book, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement, described Law and Economics as "the most successful intellectual movement in the law of the past 30 years, having rapidly moved from insurgency to hegemony."

As Law and Economics spread, underwritten at each step by the Olin foundation and other conservative backers including the Kochs and Scaife, liberal critics grew alarmed.The Alliance for Justice, a liberal nonprofit in Washington, published a critical report in 1993 warning that "a small wealthy group" was trying to "fundamentally alter the way that justice is dispensed in our society." It revealed that the Olin foundation was paying students thousands of dollars to take classes in Law and Economics at Georgetown Law School and to attend workshops on the subject at Columbia Law School.

Despite this ethically dubious situation, only one law school, at the University of California at Los Angeles, turned the Olin funds away, arguing that by plying students with grant money, the foundation was "taking advantage of students' financial need to indoctrinate them with a particular ideology."

More controversial still were Law and Economics seminars that the Olin foundation funded for judges. The seminars were initiated by Henry Manne, who had become dean of the George Mason University School of Law, which he was trying to transform into a hub of libertarian jurisprudence. The seminars treated judges to two-week-long, all-expenses-paid immersion training in Law and Economics, usually in luxurious settings like the Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo, Fla.

They soon became popular free vacations for the judges, a cross between Maoist cultural re-education camps and Club Med. After a few hours of learning why environmental and labor laws were anathema, or why, as Manne argued, insider-trading laws did more harm than good, the judges broke for golf, swimming, and delightful dinners with their hosts. Within a few years, 660 judges had gone on these junkets, some, like the U.S. Court of Appeals judge and unconfirmed Supreme Court nominee Douglas Ginsburg, many times. By one count, 40 percent of the federal judiciary had participated, including the future Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Clarence Thomas.

A variety of major corporations eagerly joined Olin and other conservative foundations in footing the bills. A study by the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity found that between 2008 and 2012 close to 185 federal judges attended judicial seminars sponsored by conservative interests, several of which had cases before the courts. The lead underwriters were the Charles Koch Foundation, the Searle Freedom Trust, ExxonMobil, Shell Oil, the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, and State Farm, the insurance company. Topics ranged from "The Moral Foundations of Capitalism" to "Terrorism, Climate, and Central Planning: Challenges to Liberty and the Rule of Law."

Simultaneously, the Olin foundation provided crucial start-up funds for the Federalist Society, an organization for conservative law students founded in 1982. With $5.5 million from the Olin foundation, as well as large donations from foundations tied to Scaife, the Kochs, and other conservative legacies, the Federalist Society grew from a pipe dream shared by three ragtag law students into a powerful professional network of 42,000 right-leaning lawyers, with 150 law-school campus chapters and about 75 lawyers' groups nationally. All of the conservative justices on the Supreme Court are members, as are former vice president Dick Cheney, the former attorneys general Edwin Meese and John Ashcroft, and numerous members of the federal bench. Its president, Eugene B. Meyer, son of a founding editor of National Review, acknowledged that without Olin funding "it possibly wouldn't exist at all." Looking back, the Olin foundation's staff described it as "one of the best investments" the foundation ever made.

The Olin foundation also backed what came to be known as the Collegiate Network, privately financing a string of right-wing newspapers on America's college campuses. Among them was The Dartmouth Review, which infamously published an editorial in Ebonics proclaiming, "Now we be cornin' to Dartmut' and be up over our 'fros in studies, but we still be not graduatin' Phi Beta Kappa." The paper hosted a feast of lobster and champagne to mock a student fast against global hunger, sledge-hammered shantytowns erected by students protesting apartheid in South Africa, and published a transcript of a secretly taped meeting of students belonging to Dartmouth's gay student association. The Dartmouth Review became an incubator for right-wing media figures like D'Souza and the future conservative radio host Laura Ingraham. Its counterpart at Vassar, meanwhile, gave starts in journalism to the ABC correspondent Jonathan Karl and Marc Thiessen, an online columnist at The Washington Post best known for his defense of the Bush administration's use of torture.

JOHN M. Olin died in 1982 at the age of 89, but after his death his foundation became even more robust. He left it about $50 million in his estate and another $50 million in a trust for his widow, which came to the foundation in 1993 after she died. The funds were well invested, growing to some $370 million in all before the foundation spent it down and closed its doors in 2005. Olin had directed his foundation to shut down during the lifetime of the trustees for fear that it would fall into the hands of liberals, as he believed the Ford Foundation had tragically done.

As the Olin foundation spent itself out of existence, Michael Joyce jumped to a new and far more powerful private foundation, started by another conservative family. In 1985, a corporate merger in Milwaukee created a spectacular windfall, boosting a previously sleepy local charity, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, overnight into a nonprofit juggernaut. Its assets rocketed from $14 million to over $290 million, making it one of the 20 largest foundations in the country. Swimming in cash, the foundation's small, unpaid staff, which had mostly focused on conventional local do-gooding until then, sought out Joyce, telling him,

"We've got money, and we want to do what you did at Olin. We want to become Olin West."

Almost on the spot, Joyce moved to Milwaukee to run the Bradley foundation himself. At the Bradley foundation, Joyce had a freer hand. "He basically invented the field of modern conservative philanthropy," according to Piereson. During the next 15 years, the Bradley foundation would give away $280 million to his favorite conservative causes. It was small in comparison with older research foundations like the Ford Foundation, but unlike Ford, under Joyce's direction Bradley regarded itself as a righteous combatant in an ideological war, giving it a single-minded focus.

At least two-thirds of its grants, according to one analysis, financed conservative intellectual activity. It paid for some 600 graduate and postgraduate fellowships, right-wing think tanks, conservative journals, activists fighting Communism abroad, and its own publishing house, Encounter Books.

When Joyce took over the Bradley foundation, he funded many of the same academic organizations he had at Olin, including half of the same colleges and universities. (The Bradley foundation gave both Harvard and Yale $5.5 million during its first decade under Joyce's management.) "Typically, it was not just the same university but the same department, and in some cases, the same scholar," Bruce Murphy wrote in Milwaukee Magazine, charging that this led to a kind of "intellectual cronyism."

The anointed scholars were good ideological warriors but "rarely great scholars,"he wrote. For instance, Joyce stuck with Charles Murray in the face of growing controversy over his 1994 book, The Bell Curve, which correlated race and low IQ scores to argue that blacks were less likely than whites to join the "cognitive elite," and was loudly and convincingly discredited. The Manhattan Institute fired Murray over the controversial project. "They didn't want the grief," says Murray.But Joyce reportedly kept an estimated $1 million in grants flowing to Murray, who decamped to the American Enterprise Institute. "I knew from Mike Joyce my fellowship was portable," Murray says. But the controversy stirred by the book clouded the Bradley foundation's reputation. Joyce, who was accused of racism, said he had received death threats. He felt so threatened he demanded enhanced security. The book, he acknowledged, left "an indelible imprint on us."

When Joyce stepped down from Bradley in 2001 amid rumors of alcoholism and erratic and self-destructive behavior, his achievements transcended his personal problems. He was showered with accolades from the right. National Review described him as "the chief operating officer of the conservative movement." It added, "Wherever you looked in the battle of ideas, a light dusting would have turned up his fingerprints." The tribute concluded, "Over the period of his Bradley service, it's difficult to recall a single, serious thrust against incumbent liberalism that did not begin or end with Mike Joyce."

By 2012, the Bradley foundation's assets had reached more than $630 million, enabling it to dole out more than $32 million in grants during that year alone. The funds continued to finance welfare-reform initiatives that required the poor to find jobs, as well as attacks on public schools. The foundation also continued to support conservative beachheads in 35 different elite colleges and universities including Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford.

The foundation's annual Bradley Prizes had by then become the glittering Academy Awards ceremony for conservatives, a night at Washington's Kennedy Center on the banks of the Potomac filled with evening gowns, tuxedos, overlong acceptance speeches, live musical fanfares, and up to four annual $250,000 prizes given to a Who's Who of the movement.

Over the years, winners have included the columnist George Will, who subsequently became a trustee of the foundation. Also honored with the award were the founders of the Federalist Society as well as Princeton's Robert George; Bill Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard; the Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield; the Fox News president, Roger Ailes; and the Heritage Foundation's stalwarts Ed Meese and Ed Feulner. Almost all of the recipients had played major roles in tugging the American political debate to the right. And almost all had also been supported over the years by a tiny constellation of private foundations filled with tax-deductible gifts from a handful of wealthy reactionaries whose identities and stories very few Americans knew but whose "overarching purpose," as Joyce said, "was to use philanthropy to support a war of ideas."

Jane Mayer is a staff writer at The New Yorker. This article is adapted from her new book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, just out from Doubleday.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc.

http://chronicle.com.oca.ucsc.edu/section/About-the-Chronicle/83

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chris hedges AA woman guest 6/23/21? laughs at it CRT taking over unis, economics maybe ~ kochademia?

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https://www.**urban.org**/sites/default/files/**2019**/06/27/conservative_philanthropy_in_higher_education.pdf

...The importance of the Walgreen Foundation’s support raises a counterfactual: would these scholars have enjoyed prominent careers without that financial assistance? Like all counterfactuals, the conclusion must be speculative. Certainly, many of the scholars at the University of Chicago who received funding from the Walgreen Foundation (such as Posner and Becker) may well have had brilliant academic careers even if the Walgreen Foundation and the Graduate School of Business had never existed. However, this misses the point: the success of George Stigler’s Walgreen-funded project created a scholarly network and a financial infrastructure with which to promote their pro–free market ideas. Without Walgreen’s support, that may well have been more difficult.

CASE STUDY II:HENRY MANNE AND LAW AND ECONOMICS

The success of Stigler’s project can be understood within the context of a broader conservative philanthropic movement that built upon past victories. Before Stigler constructed an antistatist economics and business program at the University of Chicago, Keynesians (who supported muscular state interventions in the economy) tended to dominate economic thought in the United States.

The most prominent economists and economics programs in America (e.g., Paul Samuelson, who served as an economic advisor to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and built MIT’s economics department into a powerhouse) predominantly belonged to the Keynesian tradition.11 Stigler’s anti-statist economics program not only allowed for the transformation of economics programs throughout American higher education, but provided academic support for the conservative transformation of the law. 

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}:

Steven Teles’s (2008) book on the development of the conservative legal establishment, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law, strongly emphasizes the Chicago school’s importance in the creation of the field of “law and economics” in the 1970s. “Law and economics” is, essentially, the application of economic analysis—specifically economic analysis rooted in the Austrian school’s free market philosophy—to public policy and legal questions.12 Not every early attempt to institutionalize conservative legal and economics programs was as successful as Stigler’s. Henry Manne, whom Teles calls one the great organizational entrepreneurs of law and economics, attempted to build a dedicated conservative law program at the University of Rochester in the late 1960s by cultivating conservative alumni and foundation support.

...

CASE III: THE OLIN FOUNDATION AND THE BEACHHEAD THEORY

Although a dense network of conservative philanthropic foundations—including the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Scaife Foundations, and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation—became prominent funders of right-wing causes in the 1970s and early 1980s, the John M. Olin Foundation has received the most scholarly attention for the following three reasons: (1) it was one of the first conservative foundations to focus on giving in higher education to achieve its political aims, (2) its peer institutions considered it an innovative leader in right-wing philanthropic giving, and (3) it has actively supported studies that highlight its history and mission. Such studies include John J. Miller’s official history of the foundation, A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America, and Steven Teles’s more neutral The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement, both of which received support from Olin Foundation grants. 17 Scholars and philanthropic officials have centered these points (particularly its reputation for innovation) in criticisms of the Olin Foundation’s politics (Sally Covington’s Moving a Public Policy Agenda, for example, devotes one of its major case studies to the foundation because of its reputation for innovation and impact).

Given the success of the Olin Foundation’s projects and of its broader vision of promarket social change rooted in college and university campuses, this reputation is well deserved.18 John M. Olin, whose Winchester Repeating Arms Company made a fortune during World War II manufacturing arms and ammunition for the US Army, was not the first right-wing billionaire to establish a dedicated philanthropic foundation in their name (Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, and even the comparatively less wealthy Charles Walgreen preceded him). But Olin was concerned that “mission creep” had set in at the major establishment philanthropic organizations, leading them to betray their founders’ promarket ideals. He was determined to avoid the same fate, and to ensure his money was tied to meaningful institution-building and political change. The Olin Foundation was therefore designed to have a limited lifespan: Olin died in 1982, and the foundation folded in 2005 after having disbursed nearly $300 million to conservative causes.19

...

CASE IV: THE KOCHS AND GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

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ANTIDOTE

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/the-world-is-in-desperate-need-for-a-revolution-in-economics-education/

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George Mason Law Review 19th Annual Antitrust Symposium: Antitrust in an Interconnected World

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EVENT DETAILS

Date: Thursday, February 18, 2016 12:00 am to 11:59 pm

Venue: George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School

Division: The Attorneys General Education Program

The symposium focused on the unique challenges in competition and antitrust law arising from and existing within the interconnectedness of jurisdictions around the world. Panels discussed the intersection of antitrust and privacy regulations, the global Google investigations, GUPPIs and a Safe Harbor standard, and extraterritoriality concerns.

Expert panelists and speakers presented viewpoints of both domestic and international antitrust regimes. The symposium featured a morning keynote conversation moderated by Terry Calvani, Of Counsel, Freshfields Bruckhaus Derringer LLP, and a lunch keynote delivered by William E. Kovacic, Global Competition Professor of Law and Policy; Professor of Law; Director, Competition Law Center, George Washington University Law School.

The 19th Annual Law Review was sponsored by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP and Charles River Associates.

Agenda

Opening Keynote: Due Process

Opening Keynote: Due Process

Speakers:

Frank Montag, Partner, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP

Abbot B. Lipsky, Jr., Partner, Latham & Watkins LLP

Randolph W. Tritell, Director, Office of International Affairs, Federal Trade Commission

Commentator:

Terry Calvani, Of Counsel, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP

Global Antitrust Investigations: Google

Panelists:

Seth Bloom, President and Founder, Bloom Strategic Counsel PLLC

D. Daniel Sokol, Professor of Law, Levin College of Law, University of Florida

Andrea Renda, Senior Research Fellow and Head of Regulatory Affairs Program, Centre for European Policy Studies

Michael A. Salinger, Senior Academic Adviser, Charles River Associates

Moderate:

Geoffrey A. Manne, Founder & Executive Director, International Center for Law & Economics

Extraterritoriality Concerns: FTAIA

Panelists:

Robert D. Wick, Partner, Covington & Burling LLP

Kirsten C. Limarzi, Chief, Levin College of Law, University of Florida

The Honorable Jeanne Pratt, Senior Deputy Commissioner of Competition, Mergers Branch, Government of Canada Competition Bureau

Megan E. Jones, Senior Academic Adviser, Charles River Associates

Moderater:

The Honorable Douglas H. Ginsburg, Senior Judge, United States of Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Professor of Law, George Mason University

GUIPPI and the Safe Harbour?

Panelists:

Robert D. Willing, Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs, Princeton University

Paul L. Yde, Partner, Freshfields Bruckhas Deringer LLP

Deborah L. Feinstein, Director, Bureau of Competition, Federal Trade Commission

Moderator:

Thomas A. Lambert, Wall Chair in Corporate Law and Governance Professor of Law, University of Missouri School of Law

Antitrust Lessons for Privacy Regulators

Panelists:

James C. Cooper, Associate Professor of Law and Director, Program on Economics & Privacy, George Mason University School of Law

Darren S. Tucker, Partner, Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP

The Honorable Maureen K. Ohlhausen, Commissioner, Federal Trade Commission

Keith Waehrer, Partner, Bates White Economic Consulting

Moderator:

Daniel P. O’Brien, Senior Economic Adviser, Federal Trade Commission

For More Information, Contact: Henry G. Manne Programs

703.993.8382

LECManne@gmu.edu

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folz also runs:

The Congressional Civil Justice Caucus Academy provides rigorous and balanced educational programs on a range of civil justice issues for the benefit of the general public and members of the US Congress and their staff.

The Academy offers educational briefings on Capitol Hill.  Panelists at Academy events represent a balanced set of perspectives and include business leaders, lawyers, think tank experts, academics, and Members of Congress. 

Past Events

Thirty-Second Economics Institute for Law Professors > 

Sunday, July 10 to Friday, July 22, 2016 

The Omni Homestead Resort, Hot Springs, VA

Fourth Annual LEC Public Policy Conference on the Law & **Economics** of Privacy and Data Security > 

Wednesday, June 22, 2016 

George Mason University School of Law,, 3301 Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22201

LEC Workshop on Consumer Protection for AG Staff and Economists > 

Monday, June 20 to Wednesday, June 22, 2016 

George Mason University School of Law,, 3301 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22201

Administrative Law and the FSOC: MetLife's Challenge of Too Big To Fail Designation > 

Friday, June 17, 2016, 12 noon to 1:00 PM 

Rayburn House Office Building 2226, Washington, DC 20515

Sixth Annual Public Policy Institute on Financial Services Regulation > 

Tuesday, June 7 to Thursday, June 9, 2016 

George Mason University School of Law, Founders Hall Auditorium, 3301 Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22201

LEC Consumer Credit Academy > 

Sunday, June 5 to Tuesday, June 7, 2016 

George Mason University School of Law, Founders Hall Auditorium, 3301 Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22201

Tenth Annual Judicial Symposium on Civil Justice Issues > 

Sunday, May 22 to Tuesday, May 24, 2016 

George Mason University School of Law, 3301 Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22201

What Should Be Done About Puerto Rico? > 

Friday, May 20, 2016 

Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515

LEC Workshop on:(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}::{ Empirical Methods for Law Professors > 

Monday, May 16 to Friday, May 20, 2016 

George Mason University School of Law,, 3301 Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22201

Economics Institute for Judges, May 2016 > 

Sunday, May 1 to Friday, May 6, 2016 

George Mason University School of Law, 3301 Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22201

Program on Economics & Privacy: Digital Information Policy Scholars Conference > 

Friday, April 29, 2016 

George Mason University School of Law, Founders Hall Auditorium,, 3301 Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22201

IEX and High-Frequency Trading in the US Equity Market > 

Friday, April 22, 2016 

Rayburn House Office Building, , Room 2226, Washington, DC 20515

http://www.masonlec.org/programs/congressional-civil-justice-caucus-academy

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:{:{}:

Jonathan R. Foltz

Manager,Attorneys General Education Program}:

:{:{:{}:

}:}:

State Attorneys General often approach the increasingly broad array of issues they encounter from a litigation perspective despite the significant regulatory and public policy implications of their decisions.

The Mason Attorneys General Education Program offers broad-based programs focused on the economic and public policy issues that these policymakers encounter in the course of their public service. The AGEP provides a common forum where this important policy constituency may engage with experts and colleagues in identifying and analyzing key issues from diverse perspectives.

With the advice of a bipartisan Advisory Board, the AGEP develops and offers timely, rigorous, and balanced programs. AGs and staff from the 50 states, DC, and the US territories are invited. Conference presentations are recorded and made available online for those unable to attend.

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http://www.masonlec.org/programs/35

The Honorable Thurbert E. Baker

Former Attorney General of Georgia, ex officio

The Honorable Cynthia Coffman

Attorney General of Colorado

The Honorable Joseph A. Foster

Attorney General of New Hampshire

The Honorable Mark R. Herring

Attorney General of Virginia

The Honorable Samuel S. Olens

Attorney General of Georgia

The Honorable E. Scott Pruitt

Attorney General of Oklahoma

The Honorable Karl A. Racine

Attorney General of the District of Columbia

The Honorable Sean D. Reyes

Attorney General of Utah

The Honorable Lawrence G. Wasden

Attorney General of Idaho

The Honorable Gregory F. Zoeller

Attorney General of Indiana

omg:

Members of the Mason Attorneys General Education Program Chief Deputies Advisory Council

David Blake,Office of the Colorado Attorney General

Sheila M. Calkins,Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General

Patricia A. Conners,Office of the Florida Attorney General

Gerald J. Coyne,Office of the Rhode Island Attorney General

Lucy H. Haynes,Office of the Tennessee Attorney General

Brian P. Kane,Office of the Idaho Attorney General

Jeffrey L. Milsteen,Office of the Georgia Attorney General

Gary D. Secrest,Office of the Indiana Attorney General

==

Event Archive

LEC Workshop on Consumer Protection for AG Staff and Economists > 

Monday, June 20 to Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Sixth Annual Public Policy Institute on Financial Services Regulation > 

Tuesday, June 7 to Thursday, June 9, 2016

LEC Consumer Credit Academy > 

Sunday, June 5 to Tuesday, June 7, 2016

:{:{}:

}:

i think:

This program will focus on cutting-edge and emerging topics in the regulation of consumer credit, payment systems, and data security, including the migration to Chip & PIN cards in the United States, the regulation of Bitcoin and other blockchain technologies, new research in consumer credit, and issues at the intersection of the First Amendment and consumer payments. In addition, the program will feature a lecture by Charles Calomiris, author of Fragile by Design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit.

George Mason Law Review 19th Annual Antitrust Symposium: Antitrust in an Interconnected World > 

Thursday, February 18, 2016

AGEP Symposium on the Economics and Law of Public Pension Reform > 

Thursday, October 29 to Saturday, October 31, 2015

Workshop on Higher Education and Public Policy Conference on Competition and Consumer Protection in Higher Education > 

Wednesday, October 14 to Friday, October 16, 2015

AGEP Economics Institute > 

Sunday, September 27 to Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Third Annual LEC Public Policy Conference on Privacy and Data Security > 

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

AGEP Fifth Annual Public Policy Institute on Financial Services > 

Wednesday, April 29 to Friday, May 1, 2015

AGEP Public Policy Conference on Federalism and the Pharmaceutical Industry >

Wednesday, March 25 to Friday, March 27, 2015

Eleventh Annual Symposium of the Journal of Law, Economics, and Policy: A Symposium on Consumer Credit and the American Economy > 

Friday, November 14, 2014

AGEP Economics Institute > 

Sunday, September 28 to Wednesday, October 1, 2014

LEC Public Policy Conference on Administration Unbound? Delegation, Deference, and Discretion > 

Friday, September 12, 2014

AGEP Workshop on Administrative Law & the States > 

Wednesday, September 10 to Friday, September 12, 2014

LEC Public Policy Conference on "The Future of Privacy and Data Security Regulation" > 

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

AGEP Fourth Annual Public Policy Institute, "Financial Services Regulation" > 

Wednesday, April 30 to Friday, May 2, 2014

LEC Public Policy Conference on Energy and the Environment: Old Fuels, New Technologies, and Market Dynamics > 

Monday, April 7, 2014

AGEP Public Policy Institute on Antitrust Economics > 

Tuesday, February 11 to Thursday, February 13, 2014

AGEP Public Policy Conference on Federalism and State Regulation of Lending > 

Wednesday, November 13 to Friday, November 15, 2013

AGEP Economics Institute > 

Sunday, September 29 to Wednesday, October 2, 2013

AGEP Public Policy Conference, "The Law & Economics of Privacy and Data Security" > 

Tuesday, June 18 to Thursday, June 20, 2013

AGEP Public Policy Conference on Competition, Search, and Social Media > 

Tuesday, May 14 to Wednesday, May 15, 2013

AGEP Public Policy Conference on Counterfeiting & Piracy > 

Tuesday, May 7 to Thursday, May 9, 2013

Understanding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau > 

Thursday, May 2, 2013

AGEP Third Annual Public Policy Institute, "Financial Services Regulation" > 

Wednesday, May 1 to Friday, May 3, 2013

AGEP Public Policy Conference on "Privacy, Regulation, and Antitrust" > 

Wednesday, January 16 to Friday, January 18, 2013

[AGEP Summit on Federalism and the Future of Fossil Fuels >](http://www.masonlec.org/events/event/91-agep-summit-federalism-future-fossil-fuels "AGEP Summit on Federalism and the Future of Fossil Fuels

") 

Wednesday, January 16 to Thursday, January 17, 2013

AGEP Public Policy Conference on the Economics of Consumer Protection > 

Sunday, October 21 to Tuesday, October 23, 2012

AGEP Economics Institute > 

Sunday, September 30 to Wednesday, October 3, 2012

AGEP Public Policy Institute > 

Sunday, December 11 to Wednesday, December 14, 2011

AGEP Conference on Counterfeiting and Piracy > 

Wednesday, October 12 to Friday, October 14, 2011

AGEP Public Policy Institute > 

Sunday, May 8 to Wednesday, May 11, 2011

==

By Alicia Parlapiano

Oklahoma energy companies were there, according to an agenda, joined by executives from Peabody Energy of Missouri, the world’s largest private-sector coal producer, as well as the SouthernCompany, which has aggressively challenged federal air pollution mandates.

The nation’s top corporate energy regulatory lawyers were there, too, includingF. William Brownell,a senior partner at the law firm Hunton & Williams, which has spent more than 25 years fighting the enforcement of the Clean Air Act.

The event was organized by an energy-industry-funded law and economics center at George Mason University of Virginia.The center is part of the brain trust of conservative, pro-industry groups that have worked from the sidelines to help Mr. Pruitt and other attorneys general.

And there was nothing ambiguous about the agenda.

“Suggested Responses to Assaults on Federalism” was the topic of one breakfast meeting, moderated by Attorney General Wayne K. Stenehjem of North Dakota, that showcased Mr. Brownell and three other top corporate regulatory lawyers. Mr. Hamm was the featured dinner speaker.

“We need to ensure the robust role of the states,” said Paul M. Seby, another coal industry lawyer who attended. “And as the chief law enforcement officers, it is not surprising this is becoming a cornerstone of attorney generals’ attention.”

Attorneys general said they had no choice but to team up with corporate America. “When the federal government oversteps its legal authority and takes actions that hurt our businesses and residents, it’s entirely appropriate for us to partner with the adversely affected private entities in fighting back,” said Attorney General Pam Bondi of Florida, whose top deputy attended the meeting.

A ‘Strike Force’

The impact of the gathering was immediate. A week later, a new Federalism in Environmental Policy task force was established by lawyers in the offices of 19 state attorneys general, according to email records obtained from the office of Attorney General Timothy C. Fox of Montana, who had participated in the Oklahoma meeting.

“This message is in follow-up to the excellent environmental conference put on last week by George Mason University and hosted by the Oklahoma attorney general’s office,” said one email sent byKatie Spohn, the deputy attorney general in Nebraska. “In order to continue our coordination of efforts regarding Federalism in Environmental Policy, I am seeking input from each state who participated in the conference.”

==

http://www.masonlec.org/

BS

The mission of the Law & Economics Center is to be a nexus for academic research and education that focuses on the timely and relevant economic analysis of legal and public policy issues confronting policy makers worldwide.

The vision of the LEC is that if policymakers understand economics, they will be more likely to make sound decisions that support the rule of law and the free enterprise system, thus advancing innovation, job creation, and economic growth. The LEC is committed to developing original, high-quality law and economics research and educational programs to further enhance economic understanding and impact policy solutions by providing a consistent and rational voice that will add value to relevant policy decisions.

Since its inception in 1974, the Law & Economics Center has played a critical role as a leader in law and economics research and education. The LEC recognizes both the importance of timely, relevant, and unassailable research on public policy issues as well as the necessity of communicating research findings to those who are directly shaping our country's public policy discussions.  With research divisions devoted to large-scale empirical projects and top-quality legal policy analysis, and educational arms reaching out to judges, attorneys general, and other policymakers, the LEC is uniquely equipped to positively affect national policy outcomes.

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The Law & Economics Center was founded in 1974 at the University of Miami School of Law by Henry G. Manne, Dean Emeritus of the George Mason University School of Law.

At its inception, the LEC was focused on the academic world offering regular conferences for scholars, both in law and in economics and publishing a newsletter reporting all academic developments in the law and economics field.  In 1976, it began offering programs for federal judges.

The LEC remained at Miami for six years before moving to Emory University in 1980. In 1986, it moved once again, this time to its current home, the George Mason University School of Law, where it became an integrated part of the law school. Here, for a time, the federal judicial component became the exclusive focus of the LEC.

In July of 2010, under the leadership of its new Executive Director, Henry N. Butler, the LEC was revitalized.  Today, it not only offers its now well known programs for federal judges, but it has successfully expanded its offerings to once again include robust programs for the academic community as well as for new groups of policymakers, which includestate judges, state attorneys general and their senior staff attorneys and Congressional staff.

In the LEC’s 37th year, academic year 2010-2011, the LEC it grew from an organization with an annual budget of $1.2 million offering eight residential judicial programs for approximately 200 judges per year to one that raised over $5 million and offered 42 programs attended by 445 judges, 146 attorneys general and attorneys general senior staff, 154 scholars representing 79 academic institutions, and 137 other policymakers in that year alone. 

During the 2011-2012 academic year, the LEC offered 39 programs with an attendance of over 1800 participants.  

In 2012-2013, the LEC ran 48 programs totaling 151 program days, commissioned 24 academic papers, completed 4 research projects, and initiated 4 new research projects.  In the process, it brought together 382 academics, 289 judges, 9 attorneys general, 215 attorneys general staff members, and 267 congressional staff members.  The LEC did this with a team of 14 and a budget of $6.5 million.  The LEC has 47 programs scheduled for the 2013-2014 academic year. 

The LEC does not charge for its programs and, thus, must rely on the generous support of many individuals, foundations and corporations to achieve its success.  It operates upon the belief that if policymakers understand economics, they will be more likely to make sound decisions that support the rule of law and the free enterprise system, thus advancing innovation, job creation and economic growth.  The LEC is committed to developing original, high-quality law and economics research and educational programs to further enhance this understanding and to impact policy solutions.

==

Gail A. Andler,Superior Court of California, County of Orange

Richard T. Andrias,Supreme Court, State of New York, Appellate Division, First Department

Robert L. Carter,3rd District Appellate Court, Illinois

Kenneth F. Crow,North Carolina Superior Court

Albert Diaz,US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit

Douglas H. Ginsburg, US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit

George C. Hanks Jr.,US District Court for the Southern District of Texas

C. Darnell Jones, II,US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

Renée Cohn Jubelirer,Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania

William C. Mims,Supreme Court of Virginia

Pauline Newman,US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

A. Raymond Randolph,US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit

Lori S. Rowe, Florida First District Court of Appeal

P. Thomas Thornbrugh,Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals

Sean D. Wallace,Prince George’s County Circuit Court, Maryland

James T. Worthen,Texas, 12th District Court of Appeals

==

Todd J. Zywicki, Executive Director, is a George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law. Additionally, he is a senior scholar of the Mercatus Center and a senior fellow of the James Buchanan Center for Political Economy Program on Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (both at George Mason University). He has been a member of the Mason law faculty since 1998, having previously served on the faculty of the Mississippi College of Law, and as a visiting professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, and Boston College Law School. Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, practiced bankruptcy and commercial law, and from 2003-04, he was director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. Professor Zywicki earned his BA cum laude from Dartmouth College with high honors in his major (Government), his MA in economics from Clemson University, and his JD from the University of Virginia, where he was a John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics.  

==

:{Law Economics Center:{}:

at the George Mason University School of Law}:

:{:{}:

}:

:{:{}:

After General Pruitt's successful January 2013 Summit on Federalism and the Future of Fossil Fuels in Oklahoma City, the Mason Law Economics

Center started making plans to launch an initiative for Energy and the Environment.

Public Policy conference on Energy and the Environment at the

George Mason Law School in Arlington Virginia on Monday, April 7th, 2014.

}:

:{:{}:

}:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I78aRvoZclZSmqaS7NpzJDr0R6PPFdSy8XJ9tOUjL6Y/edit?usp=sharing

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_N._Butler

Henry N. Butler (born c. 1955) is an American professor of law, economics, and public policy. He currently serves as the executive director of the Law & Economics Center at the George Mason University School of Law, however on April 22, 2015 Dean Daniel D. Polsby sent an email to alumni announcing that Butler would be replacing him as dean of the law school as of June 25, 2015. He formerly served as the Director of the Judicial Education Program at the American Enterprise Institute-Brookings Institution Joint Center for Regulatory Studies. Butler is aconservative and asupporter of free markets with little regulation; he has acted as an expert witness in a legal cases involving antitrust, restrictive covenants, damages, joint ventures, and other issues.

Butler ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia's 11th congressional district in the 1992 elections; he lost the general election to Democrat Leslie L. Byrne.

Butler is the son of M. Caldwell Butler, who served as U.S. Representative from Virginia's 6th congressional district from 1972 to 1983.[1] He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from the University of Richmond in 1977. He then attended Virginia Tech, where he earned aMaster of Arts in 1979 and a Ph.D. in 1982. There he studied under Nobel Economics LaureateJames M. Buchanan. Butler received his Juris Doctor law degree from the University of Miami School of Law in 1982, where he was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics.

Butler spent three years at Texas A&M as an assistant professor of management before becoming a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School during the 1985-86 academic year. From 1986 to 1993, Butler was a professor at George Mason University School of Law. After 1992 ButlerFred C. and Mary R. KochDistinguished Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Kansas School of Law and School of Business, and for a short time served as dean of the Chapman University, Argyros School of Business and Economics and Chairman of the Chapman University Law and Organizational Economics Center before moving to Chapman in 2001.

Butler has been involved in the political and legal spheres. While at George Mason University, he served as director of the Law & Economics Center at the George Mason University School of Law, which operates the Economics Institutes program for federal judges, which is controversial.[2] In December 1995, Butler introduced the Economics Institute for State Judges at the University of Kansas' Law and Organizational Economics Center.

Butler has written extensively on law and economics. He has written a casebook, Economic Analysis for Lawyers (with Christopher Drahozal, Carolina Academic Press), used at the Economics Institute for State Judges. Other books by Butler include Unhealthy Alliances: Bureaucrats, Interest Groups, and Politicians in Health (1994, American Entreprise Institute) The Corporation and the Constitution (with Larry E. Ribstein; 1995, American Entreprise Institute); andUsing Federalism to Improve Environmental Policy (with Jonathan R. Macey; 1996, American Entreprise Institute).

Butler serves on the Legal Advisory Council of the AEI Legal Center for the Public Interest and the Advisory Board of the Atlantic Legal Foundation.

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bs

Henry N. Butler, Executive Director, is a George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law.  Butler has held academic appointments at Texas A&M University, the University of Chicago Law School, the University of Kansas Schools of Business and Law, Chapman University Schools of Business and Law, and Northwestern University School of Law.  He has a BA in Economics from the University of Richmond, an MA and PhD in Economics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute (where he was a student of George Mason’s Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan), and a JD from the University of Miami (where he was a John M.Olin Fellow at the Law & Economics Center).

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:{:{Henry N. Butler}::{}:

George Mason University Foundation

Professor of Law

Executive Director, Law & Economics Center

George Mason University School of Law

3301 Fairfax Drive

Arlington, VA 22201

Phone: 703.993.8644

hnbutler@gmu.edu

Dr. Henry N. Butler, a leading public policy analyst and specialist in law and economics, is a George Mason

Foundation Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Law & Economics Center at George Mason. He

has devoted much of his career to improving the country’s civil justice system through judicial education

programs. Professor Butler most recently served as the first executive director of the Searle Center on Law,

Regulation and Economic Growth at Northwestern University School of Law. He has held prior

appointments at The Brookings Institute, Chapman University, the University of Kansas, the University of

Chicago, and Texas A&M University. From 1986 to 1993, he was a law professor at George Mason and

during that period also served as an Associate Dean and Director of the Law and Economics Center.

He received a M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and a

J.D. from the University of Miami School of Law. He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the

University of Richmond.}:

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Paige V. Butler, Associate Director, has fifteen years of combined experience working with the LEC, the Judicial Education Program, and at the Law & Organizational Economics Center at the University of Kansas, Chapman University, The Brookings Institution,  and Northwestern University School of Law.  Ms. Butler also has ten years of experience working in a corporate legal department.  She earned BS degrees in Accounting and Business and a JD from the University of Kansas.

James C. Cooper, Director of Research and Policy, joined the LEC in 2011 after serving in a variety of capacities at the Federal Trade Commission (including Acting Director of the Office of Policy and Planning).  He also practiced law for several years at Crowell and Moring.  Cooper has a BA from the University of South Carolina, a PhD in economics from Emory University, and JD from George Mason University School of Law where he was a Robert A. Levy Fellow in Law and Liberty.

Karen M. Czarnecki, Director of Education, joined the LEC in 2012 after serving as Chief of Staff to Pennsylvania Congressman Mike Kelly.  Czarnecki spent eight years in the administrative staff of Labor SecretaryElaine Chao and has held prior positions at The Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the office of Vice President Dan Quayle.She has a BA and JD from Catholic University.

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