The headwaters of the Animas River begin in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado. The confluence of streams—Mineral Creek, Cement Creek, and the Upper Animas—define the Upper Animas River basin. The river basin contains hundreds of inactive or abandoned mines. Among them is the Gold King Mine, located on the slope of Bonita Peak.…

As the Wall Street Journal recently noted, the FTC’s recent lawsuit against Walmart raises a fundamental constitutional issue regarding the FTC’s authority to initiate lawsuits. The point at issue concerns Congress’s authority to limit the President’s power to remove executive officers, an issue that has been in contention since Reconstruction and, perhaps, will be resolved…

  For decades, millions of American families have been dissatisfied with their local public schools, and the political parties have diverged in their approach to this problem. Democrats have generally supported providing more resources to public schools, while Republicans have favored giving families alternatives, such as vouchers to help pay private school tuition. In the…

  Did you know you can make over $200,000 a year and still be entitled to overtime pay? In Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc. v. Hewitt, the en banc Fifth Circuit recently concluded as such. This surprising result was made possible by a Department of Labor regulation that requires some hourly employees to be paid…

  Because our elected branches of government can’t always be trusted to zealously keep one another in check, litigation by individual private citizens has long been among the most effective ways to enforce separation of powers and other structural constitutional boundaries. At least four recent cases involving the Securities and Exchange Commission underscore the power…

Photo: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission building Americans interact with the First Amendment every day, whether it be through watching the evening news, criticizing the government on Twitter, or attending weekly religious services. Integral to the American experience, most would tell you that the First Amendment protects rights to free speech, religion, and press. Yet,…