The Supreme Court has long enjoyed a reputation for fairness and impartiality. Although trust in the Court has waned somewhat in recent years, recent revelations threaten that reputation, and recent research shows how politics may be seeping into the decisions of the Supreme Court as well as those...

A recent issue of Bloomberg Businessweek announced the strengthening of the housing market with a cover that was as misleading as it was unseemly. Under the headline "The Great American Housing Rebound: Flips. No-look bids. 300 percent returns. What could possibly go wrong?", the cover portrayed a house...

In his recent heartfelt address, President Obama stated it is time for "meaningful action" on gun control. It is often said that one of the main impediments to such action is the Second Amendment to the Constitution. According to the Supreme Court, the Amendment protects the right of...

Now that the election has concluded, it is time to get to the business of planning what the next four years could look like politically. Addressing the devastation of the Northeast from Sandy should certainly take the highest priority, and the fiscal cliff should follow right after but beyond that,...

I'm not exactly sure when on Monday night that it happened, but sometime around 10 p.m. I realized that my Twitter feed and Facebook page were delivering far more interesting, consistent and complete coverage of Sandy's havoc than the televised news ever could.

By now, the trope that is...

At a time when trust in our nation's banks is at a 40-year low, consumers need a way to feel confident that the bank they use is meeting their needs. They need the ability to comparison shop between banks to make sure they are bringing their business to the bank...

At the same time that we are learning about Mitt Romney's Cayman Islands tax shelters, low effective tax rate, and alleged outsourcing of jobs overseas, dark money is pouring into the presidential election in torrents. All indications are that if economic inequality in the United States is not...

Shifting alliances, unclear loyalties, palace intrigue, broken vows, poisonous edicts and bitter rivals: just when you think you've got it all figured out, someone switches sides, enemy becomes ally, villain becomes hero and victory is grabbed from the clutches of defeat. That's the vertiginous feeling one gets when watching the...

Results of a recent Gallup Poll reveal that the American public's trust in banks has hit a record low. Just 21 percent of Americans have faith in the nation's banks, the lowest recorded number since the poll was first taken in 1973. It is lower now than it...

A recent and stunning report by This American Life, in conjunction with Pro Publica, tells the story of a decades-old atrocity committed by government troops in the Guatemalan Civil War of the 1980s. The report describes the massacre at Dos Erres, a tiny village in rural Guatemala. This...

Over the last six months, three mortgage lenders reached settlements over claims of mortgage discrimination that arose during the height of the housing frenzy of the last decade. Whether these settlements are the beginning of the end of efforts to draw attention to race-based predatory lending during the housing bubble,...

The recent resignation confessional by a (now) former Goldman Sachs executive offers just the latest insight into the way that some bankers may view their customers: as a means to higher bank profits, regardless of what is in the best interests of those clients. Greg Smith, a former...

Americans' trust in all institutions, including government, media and business, has dropped across-the-board after a slight rise in 2010. In a post announcing the suspension of his campaign for the Republican nomination, as he had done on the campaign trail, Jon Huntsman decried a "deficit of...

Last year was a banner year for litigation addressing a decade's worth of risky bank behavior. Financial institutions agreed to pay billions in penalties and fines to resolve allegations of securities fraud and lending discrimination during the lead up to and fallout from the financial crisis. But the payments made...

The Occupy Wall Street movement has caught on like wildfire, and is spreading to smaller cities and towns throughout the country, and large cities throughout the world. Will it be able to sustain itself? Will it be able to convert kinetic energy into lasting reform? A lot will depend on...

The Obama Administration is struggling to find answers to the housing market puzzle. Interest rates are the lowest they have been in living memory. "For Sale" signs are plentiful on lawns throughout the country. One would think there has never been a better time to purchase a home. Yet the...

In yesterday's narrow 5-4 ruling, a majority of the justices on the U.S. Supreme Court ruled yet again in favor of rich donors over everyone else. This opinion, in particular, enters the annals of the truly bizarre. The Court deemed unconstitutional Arizona's "Clean Elections Act": not...

Lost in some of the reaction to the Supreme Court's decision halting a national class action over sex discrimination in Wal-Mart was the high court's opinion, issued on the same day, which stopped some other creative litigation that had come before it: a pair of lawsuits filed by...

From the time of early English common law, the era of the colonial and early American courts and straight through to the present, state and local governments have used litigation to rein in harmful and abusive practices. Over the years, such government-led lawsuits have sought to punish a range of...

In the fall of 2010, in one of the largest scandals to ever hit the American court system, information gathered from lawsuits across the country revealed that tens of thousands of foreclosure filings were likely fraudulent -- if not outright criminal. These revelations sparked a nation-wide investigation by all 50...