Higher education roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Canceling drivers’ licenses for nonpayment of fines is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Opioids roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Occupational licensure reform advances is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Under federal bankruptcy law, people overwhelmed by debt have a choice: They can either file under Chapter 7, which wipes out debts and, since most filers lack significant assets, allows them to keep what little they have. Or they can choose Chapter 13, which usually requires five years of payments to creditors before any debts are eliminated, but blocks foreclosures and car repossessions as long as debtors can keep up. In most of the country, Chapter 7 is the overwhelming choice. Only in the South, in a band of states stretching from North Carolina to Texas, is Chapter 13 predominant….

Upon filing, debtors are shielded from garnishments and debt collectors. But whereas under Chapter 7 those protections are generally made permanent after a few months, under Chapter 13 they last only as long as payments are made. Most Chapter 13 filers in Memphis don’t last a year, let alone five.

The two options have a different structure of legal fees. While Memphis lawyers typically charge around $1,000 for a Chapter 7, most offer a Chapter 13 for free. “Ultimately, the fees for Chapter 13 filings are higher — upwards of $3,000 — but the payments are stretched over time.” Now, the no-money-down model of Chapter 13 bankruptcy is spreading to Northern states. But there is another point of view as well: “many see Chapter 13 as the more honorable form of bankruptcy because it includes some attempt to repay debts.”

Local legal cultures and consumer bankruptcy is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Liability roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Worker: employer shouldn’t have let me drive off under influence is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Traditional Anglo-American law grants to a property owner as a matter of course not only the right to exclude guns, but also to ask of customers and other invitees that, as a condition of their visit, they agree to assume the risk of some “defensible hazards” contemplated by the law, such as harm occasioned by roaming wild animals. Is it too much to ask that gun advocates promote the actual rights prescribed by the Second Amendment against government infringement — which certainly could use promotion right now — rather than infringe traditional individual property and contract liberties by inventing spurious new gun “rights”? [Tennessean via Bearing Arms] Earlier on laws restricting property owners’ rights to set rules against guns in parking lots here, here, here, here, related Roger Pilon at Cato, and, also with coverage of “off-duty conduct” as a protected class in discrimination law, here.

Tennessee: “Bill allows suits over gun free zone incidents” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Last year…the Task Force on Federal Regulation of Higher Education—formed in 2013 at the behest of a bipartisan group of U.S. senators and comprised of top university officials from around the country—released a stunning indictment of what it called the “jungle of red tape” produced by the Education Department. The report cited analysis from George Mason’s Mercatus Center that showed federal higher education mandates increased by 56 percent from 1997-2012.

Today, the situation is bleak: There are thousands of pages of federal regulations, and the Education Department has to release “guidance” letters to clarify vague rules once per day, on average, according to the Task Force.

Case studies from individual schools reveal just how burdensome compliance can be. One example comes from Vanderbilt University, which recently analyzed its federal compliance costs and found that they accounted for $150 million—or 11 percent—of the university’s 2013 expenditures. (Vanderbilt announced that for each student, those compliance costs “equate to approximately $11,000 in additional tuition per year.”)

Earlier here. More from reader mx in comments, who notes that the Chronicle of Higher Education has criticized the Vanderbilt number on the grounds that most of the university’s regulatory costs ($117 million of $146 million) is attributed to compliance related to research, which is not necessarily charged to students as tuition.

“The Federal Leviathan Is Crushing Colleges and Universities” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

First Amendment roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system