regulatory agency

In 1973, Raymond Dirks served as an officer of a New York broker-dealer firm that specialized in investment analysis of insurance company securities for institutional investors. On March 6, Dirks received information from Ronald Secrist, a former officer of Equity Funding of America, alleging that the company's assets were vastly overstated due to fraudulent corporate practices and that regulatory agencies had failed to act on employee charges of fraud. Secrist urged Dirks to verify the allegations and disclose them publicly. Dirks decided to investigate the claims. He traveled to Equity Funding's headquarters in Los Angeles, where he interviewed several officers and employees. While senior management denied any wrongdoing, Equity Funding employees corroborated the fraud allegations. Throughout his investigation, Dirks openly discussed the information with clients and investors, none of whom included Dirks or his firm in ownership or trading of Equity Funding stock. Some of these investors sold holdings totaling more than $16 million. Dirks also contacted William Blundell, the Wall Street Journal's Los Angeles bureau chief, and urged him to publish a story on the fraud. Blundell declined to write the story because he feared that publishing such damaging hearsay might be libelous. Over the two-week period of Dirks' activities, Equity Funding's stock price fell from $26 to less than $15 per share, prompting the New York Stock Exchange to halt trading on March 27. California insurance authorities then impounded the company's records and uncovered evidence of the fraud. Only then did the SEC file a complaint against Equity Funding. On April 2, the Wall Street Journal published a front-page story based largely on information assembled by Dirks. Equity Funding subsequently entered receivership. The SEC investigated Dirks' role and, following a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge, found that he had aided and abetted violations of federal securities laws by repeating the fraud allegations to investment community members who sold their Equity Funding stock. The SEC censured Dirks, recognizing his role in exposing the fraud. Dirks sought review in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which affirmed the SEC's decision. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to address the question presented.

In 1967 the Atomic Energy Commission granted Vermont Yankee a construction permit for a nuclear power plant in Vernon, Vermont, after the required adjudicatory hearing and reviews. Vermont Yankee later applied for an operating license; NRDC intervened and objected to exclusion of fuel-reprocessing and waste-disposal impacts from the hearing. In November 1972 the Commission opened a separate rulemaking proceeding on those fuel-cycle issues, noticed two alternative approaches based on its Environmental Survey, and conducted a February 1973 hearing at which more than forty participants submitted comments but no discovery or cross-examination occurred. In April 1974 the Commission adopted a rule assigning numerical values to fuel-cycle impacts and applied it prospectively. In January 1969 Consumers Power applied for permits to build two nuclear reactors in Midland, Michigan. After staff and ACRS review, Saginaw and Mapleton intervened and raised 119 environmental contentions, including seventeen on energy conservation. The Licensing Board held hearings on radiological issues, the staff issued a final environmental impact statement in March 1972, and further hearings occurred in May and June 1972; Saginaw declined to participate in the later hearings or submit proposed findings. The Licensing Board granted the construction permit, the Appeal Board affirmed, and the Commission declined further review. In November 1973 the Commission ruled in another case that energy-conservation evidence meeting threshold tests could be considered, but it later refused Saginaw's motion to reopen the Consumers Power record. NRDC appealed the Vermont Yankee license and rule to the D.C. Circuit; Saginaw and others appealed the Consumers Power permit. In 1976 the Court of Appeals remanded both matters, holding the fuel-cycle rulemaking procedures inadequate, the Consumers Power environmental impact statement defective for omitting energy conservation, and the ACRS report insufficiently explained. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in 1977. The Commission is the successor agency to the Atomic Energy Commission under the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974. All licensing proceedings followed the two-stage process of construction permit followed by operating license under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, with NEPA environmental reviews added after 1969.

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 amended the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, the Communications Act of 1934, and other statutes to address the role of soft money and issue advocacy in federal elections. Plaintiffs included a diverse group of entities and individuals such as the National Rifle Association and the American Civil Liberties Union who alleged that BCRA was unconstitutional. Defendants included the Federal Election Commission and the Attorney General of the United States. The case was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and heard by a three-judge panel pursuant to special procedures in BCRA Section 403. The District Court received a voluminous record from the parties and issued a judgment on May 1, 2003, that upheld some provisions of BCRA and invalidated others. All losing parties filed direct appeals to the Supreme Court within ten days, and the Court noted probable jurisdiction on June 5, 2003, ordering expedited briefing and argument on September 8, 2003. More than a century of federal legislation preceded BCRA, beginning with the Tillman Act of 1907 that banned corporate contributions in connection with federal elections. Congress later extended prohibitions to unions, required disclosure of contributions and expenditures, and enacted FECA in 1971 with further amendments in 1974 that imposed contribution limits, expenditure ceilings, and created the FEC. The Supreme Court addressed constitutional challenges to the 1974 amendments in Buckley v. Valeo. After Buckley, the FEC permitted political parties to fund mixed-purpose activities such as voter registration and generic advertising in part with soft money not subject to FECA's source and amount limits. Soft-money fundraising by the national parties grew from $21.6 million in 1984 to $498 million in 2000, with large corporate and union donations often motivated by a desire for access to federal candidates. National parties transferred substantial soft money to state parties, which could use higher percentages for mixed activities under FEC allocation rules. The use of soft money also supported so-called issue ads that avoided express advocacy of a candidate's election or defeat and therefore fell outside FECA's disclosure and source restrictions. These ads frequently aired in the 60 days before federal elections, referred to clearly identified candidates, and were funded by corporations, unions, and tax-exempt organizations using misleading names. A Senate investigation into 1996 federal election practices documented both parties' use of soft money to obtain special access for large donors and the coordination of issue ads with candidates. The District Court compiled extensive evidence from declarations, expert reports, and internal party documents showing that federal officeholders solicited soft-money donations, that parties maintained tallies crediting donors to particular candidates, and that large soft-money contributions were often made to secure influence rather than for ideological reasons.

In March 1992, Alfonso Lopez, Jr., a twelfth-grade student at Edison High School in San Antonio, Texas, arrived at school carrying a concealed .38-caliber handgun and five bullets. Acting on an anonymous tip, school authorities confronted Lopez, who admitted possessing the weapon. Local police arrested him and charged him under Texas law with firearm possession on school premises. The following day, state charges were dismissed after federal agents charged Lopez with violating the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990. A federal grand jury indicted him on one count of knowing possession of a firearm at a school zone. Lopez moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that the statute exceeded Congress's power to legislate control over public schools. The district court denied the motion, concluding that the statute was a constitutional exercise of Congress's power to regulate activities affecting commerce because the business of schools affects interstate commerce. After a bench trial, the court found Lopez guilty and sentenced him to six months' imprisonment and two years of supervised release. Lopez appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which reversed the conviction, holding that the statute was beyond Congress's power under the Commerce Clause. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the case.