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Texas Tribune – ICLE Academic Affiliate Andrew Morriss was quoted in a story in the Texas Tribune in a story about the eminent-domain process in the State of Texas. You can read full piece here.

Andrew Morriss, a Texas A&M law professor who specializes in eminent domain, said the state has the power to take back the property through condemnation because the land would serve a public purpose. He said parks, highways and schools are typical public benefits for which the government will seize private land.

“Texas is what is called a quick take state,” he said. “If the government wants your property and you don’t wanna sell it, too bad, they get it.”

“The argument now is gonna be about how much they have to pay for it,” he added.

Morriss said the next step is for the state to notify the developer that it will be taking the land and make an offer. Todd can agree or disagree with the amount of money he is offered. If both groups do not reach an agreement, the issue can end up in court.

CNBC – ICLE Chief Economist Brian Albrecht was quoted by CNBC in a story about the effects of inflation on consumers. You can read full piece here.

Lower-income households also have fewer ways to reduce or change their spending habits and less in savings or investment accounts to fall back on, noted Brian Albrecht, chief economist at the International Center for Law and Economics.

“Inflation makes it hard to make decisions and think about the future, particularly for those with the fewest resources,” Albrecht said.

Fortune – ICLE Chief Economist Brian Albrecht was quoted by Fortune in a story about congressional negotiations over raising the federal debt limit. You can read full piece here.

“I don’t claim to predict politicians,” Brian Albrecht, chief economist of the International Center for Law & Economics, told Fortune. “But I tends to be an optimist about the ability to find a solution here. Even though there is a lot of theatrics, the shocking thing is Congress has found ways to get through these troubles in the past. So that’s my assumption–that they’ll find a way to do that again. I certainly don’t have big money on them not passing it.”

Washington Examiner – ICLE Senior Scholar Ben Sperry was quoted by the Washington Examiner in a story about federal legislation to limit children’s access to social media. You can read full piece here.

Ben Sperry, senior scholar for innovation policy at the International Center for Law and Economics, told the Washington Examiner that “because the Schatz-Cotton bill bans targeted advertising for teens … more will be invested in the exclusion of teens rather than building safe, vibrant social media environments for them.”

Medium – ICLE Senior Scholar Daniel J. Gilman was cited by Adam Thierer in a piece at Medium about Biden administration efforts to regulate artificial intelligence. You can read full piece here.

So, what happens next? I’d guess that Kahn and other agencies will go on the offensive in a major way in coming months and concoct broad theories of harm in an effort to unilaterally and preemptively regulate algorithmic innovations. For some thoughts about what’s to come, read these recent essays from FTC veterans Alden Abbott (“Four Horsemen of the Bureaucratic Apocalypse Come for AI”) and Daniel J. Gilman (“Artificial Intelligence Meets Organic Folly”).

Forbes – ICLE Academic Affiliate M. Todd Henderson was quoted by Forbes in a story largely about his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee on competition in digital advertising. You can read full piece here.

M. Todd Henderson, Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, appeared at the hearing on May 3, and made an eloquent case for why it is false equivalency to say selling and buying stocks and ads are alike. Just as he does in his recently published white paper for the International Center for Law and Economics, “Ads are not stocks, and any claim that they should be regulated as stocks is deeply misleading.”

He lays it out this way: The stock market is the primary means of wealth creation in the United States—enormous social stakes are implicated in ensuring that stock markets are well-regulated. In the stock market, companies can issue and sell shares of their stock to raise capital, and investors can buy and sell those shares in the hopes of making a profit.

Sen. Tim Scott – ICLE Editor-in-Chief R.J. Lehmann was quoted by Sen. Tim Scott’s office in a press release about the reintroduction of his Repeatedly Flooded Communities Preparation Act. You can read full release here.

R.J. Lehmann, Senior Fellow, International Center for Law & Economics: “From Florida to California, Missouri to Virginia, and even the Las Vegas Valley, the past year has repeatedly demonstrated the devastating consequences of flooding all across the country. That’s why it is essential that flood-prone communities consider the full scope of their infrastructure and mitigation needs, both to better secure lives and property and to ensure thoughtful and efficient investment of taxpayer resources. This legislation strikes a careful balance by encouraging such planning without burdening local communities with more top-down dictates from Washington.”

RealClearPolicy – ICLE’s white paper on “doomsday mergers” was cited in a column by Robert Bork Jr. that appeared in  RealClearPolicy. You can read full piece here.

With the economy and human lives at stake, we should ask just how good are the prognostications of progressive antitrusters? Now, thanks to a new study from the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE), we have a scorecard of their forecasting acumen. ICLE found:

• When Amazon purchased Whole Foods in 2017, Lina Khan — then warming up in the academic and policy bullpen — warned this acquisition “would allow Amazon to potentially thwart future innovations.” Thank goodness for that “potentially” qualification! In 2023, the stocks of many rival retail companies significantly outperform Amazon’s. ICLE reports that Whole Foods’ market share has not meaningfully increased since its acquisition by Amazon.
• When Anheuser-Busch InBev put forward a deal in 2016 to acquire SABMiller, progressive antitrusters told us it would “eliminate competition” in brewing, with “devastating” effects on the craft-brewing industry. In the following four years, the U.S. market saw an 11% increase in the number of craft brewers, while market concentration by the four largest breweries dropped from 90% to 68.6%.
• Khan has particularly harped on Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram in 2012, calling it a “killer acquisition.” Now known as Meta, the company’s stock has fallen by half, while it bleeds users to newer, hipper platforms.
• Google’s 2019 purchase of Fitbit prompted progressive senators to warn that “Fitbit’s consumer data to Google could further diminish the ability of companies to compete with Google in … ad technology markets.” Did that happen? Google’s share of online advertising spending has declined from 34.7% to 28.8%. Fitbit’s share of the smartwatch market has fallen from 5.7% to 3.8%. Google does not use Fitbit data to target Google Ads.

I could cite other examples from ICLE, but this is starting to feel like clubbing baby seals.

National Review – ICLE Chief Economist Brian Albrecht was cited by National Review’s The Corner blog in a piece about so-called “doomsday mergers” in the rail industry. You can read full piece here.

Brian Albrecht recently wrote a piece for Capital Matters about a report he co-authored that looks at the doomsday predictions regarding major corporate mergers of the recent past. “We find that most of the doomsday scenarios that critics predicted never materialized,” he wrote.