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Donor-advised funds (DAFs) have enjoyed explosive growth in recent years, causing legislators and policy analysts to become increasingly interested in whether DAFs should be subject to more regulation and/or disclosure requirements. DAFs are a form of charitable giving in which donors transfer their cash or property to a DAF sponsor, giving up legal ownership but retaining “advisory privileges” which allow the donor (or other designated advisor) to make decisions about the investment and disbursement of DAF assets. Donors get an upfront charitable deduction because the DAF sponsor is itself a 501(c)(3) organization and the donor technically gives up dominion and control over their donation. But, because of the advisory privileges, DAFs operate in practice like a combination of a charitable investment, savings, and checking account. The donor decides whether or where to invest DAF funds and when, if ever, to disburse them to charities. This short paper examines the following arguments around DAF payout: First, and most importantly, this paper addresses the claim that DAF sponsors regularly payout in excess of 20%. Second, we apply this formula to the 2017 tax returns for all DAF sponsoring organizations, the most recent year for which a complete set of returns are available. We show that the formula used by DAF sponsors increased payout rates by 53% for all DAF sponsors (and by 56% for commercial DAF sponsors) over the payout rate that would have been derived using the proper method for calculating payout. Third, we explore the relatively new concept of flow rate. Finally, we explore how the existing measurements of DAF payout and flow rates overstate their benefits to charity because of the failure to account for DAF-to-DAF transfers.

The United States is currently trying to manage a fast-moving public health crisis due to the coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19). The economic and financial ramifications of the outbreak are serious. This Working Paper discusses these ramifications and identifies three interrelated but potentially conflicting policy priorities at stake in managing the economic and financial fallout of the COVID-19 crisis: (1) providing social insurance to individuals and families in need; (2) managing systemic economic and financial risk; and (3) encouraging critical spatial behaviors to help contain COVID-19 transmission. The confluence of these three policy considerations and the potential conflicts among them make the outbreak a significant and unique regulatory challenge for policymakers, and one for which the consequences of getting it wrong are dire. This Working Paper—which will be continually updated to reflect current developments—will analyze the major legislative and other policy initiatives that are being proposed and enacted to manage the economic and financial aspects of the COVID-19 crisis by examining these initiatives through the lens of these three policy priorities. It starts by analyzing the provisions of H.R. 6201 (the “Families First Coronavirus Responses Act”) passed by the house on March 14, 2020. By doing so, this Working Paper provides an analytical framework for evaluating these initiatives.

In 2017, the Federal Communications Commission adopted the Restoring Internet Freedom Order (RIF Order), which repealed the Commission’s two-year-old net neutrality restrictions. This action spawned a flurry of activity in state legislatures that sought to re-impose those restrictions at the state level and subject the RIF Order to a death by a thousand paper cuts. Nowhere was this state activity more prominent than California, where Senate Bill 822 became a vehicle for net neutrality advocates not only to resurrect the requirements of the now-defunct 2015 Open Internet Order, but also to impose additional regulations that even the Obama-era FCC had rejected. Unsurprisingly, the Justice Department challenged SB-822 in federal court in California, arguing that federal law preempted the state’s attempt to regulate the Internet from Sacramento. In response, California agreed to voluntarily stay enforcement of the statute while the D.C. Circuit heard Mozilla v. FCC, which was considering the validity of the FCC’s RIF Order. For almost two years, California’s bold net neutrality initiative has been in limbo, with supporters and critics alike waiting to see if the bill will ever amount to more than (in one commentator’s words) a “publicity stunt.” With the Mozilla litigation now complete, the day of reckoning is approaching – and the California court is likely to find that much, if not all, of SB-822 is preempted. At a minimum, the Communications Act expressly preempts most of the regulations that SB-822 places on wireless companies. More generally, the state law interferes with the carefully calibrated federal broadband policy determined in the RIF Order, and on that basis should face conflict preemption by the Supremacy Clause. These claims, which Mozilla left open, are fatal to much, if not all, of California’s attempt to regulate broadband network management practices.

The future of economic and social rights is unlikely to resemble its past. Neglected within the human rights movement, avoided by courts, and subsumed within a conception of development in which economic growth was considered a necessary (and, by some, sufficient) condition for rights fulfillment, economic and social rights enjoyed an uncertain status in international human rights law and in the public laws of most countries. Yet today, under conditions of immense poverty, insecurity, and social distress, the rights to education, health care, housing, social security, food, water, and sanitation are increasingly at the top of the human rights agenda. Economic and social rights are now present in most of the world’s constitutions, most of the main human rights covenants, and are often given an explicit justiciable status. At the same time, as different legal traditions and regions embrace this shift, their highly integrated economies face a profound reckoning with economic justice. The future cannot be predicted; but neither can it be ignored. This paper, introducing the book’s 21 chapters, incorporates a detailed examination of constitutions, courts and international mechanisms of accountability. These signal a transformation in debates about human rights, democracy, law and development.

The Robert Morris library, the only known extant, antebellum African American–owned library, reveals its owner’s intellectual commitment to full citizenship and equality for people of color. Although studies of lawyers’ libraries have focused on large collections, this article provides a model for interpreting small libraries, particularly where few personal papers remain extant.

What makes a constitution difficult to amend? The answer varies across jurisdictions. In the United States, for example, the threshold problem is getting two-thirds of Congress to initiate an amendment—a virtually impossibility in our present day given that Congress has a hard enough time agreeing by a simple majority to pass a simple law. In Australia and Switzerland, it is largely the combination of subnational approval and referendal ratification that complicates matters. In Canada—the subject of this paper—constitutional amendment difficulty derives from similar challenges associated with initiation and ratification but perhaps even more from the use of omnibus amendment bills that combine the good with the bad and give political actors as much a reason to vote in favour as to vote against. In this paper prepared for a symposium on “Rewriting the Canadian Constitution,” I suggest that amending the Constitution of Canada could become easier under a new single-subject rule that prohibits omnibus amendment bills but permits multiple single-amendment bills only if voted on separately and differentiated by subject-matter. Imposing a single-subject rule for constitutional amendments in Canada is likely to make the Constitution much more flexible in some important ways but perhaps much more rigid in others.