Pacific Legal Foundation

Podcast
InfluenceWatch Podcast #300: How SCOTUS Could Shrink the Administrative State
In theory, the case is a simple question: Must fishing rig owners pay the government for the mandatory government inspectors who attend those rigs? But in deciding that question, the…
by Sarah Lee, Michael Watson on January 19, 2024

Podcast
InfluenceWatch Podcast #255: COVID Relief Racism in Oklahoma and Georgia
Equal treatment under the law, regardless of race: One would think that all could agree on that principle, but in states and localities across the country—even in Republican-controlled states—that principle…
by Sarah Lee, Michael Watson on February 3, 2023

Organization Trends
Civil Asset Forfeiture Makes for Strange Bedfellows
In 2020, the Capital Research Center (CRC) examined civil asset forfeiture and noted how criticism of the practice had brought together a rather improbable ideological coalition. As efforts to reform…
by Robert Stilson on February 2, 2023

Podcast
InfluenceWatch Podcast #237: A Family Fights the EPA
“Who decides? Congress or the executive?” is a key question underlying many prominent legal interpretation disputes. One such dispute, over defining “waters of the United States,” has trapped one family…
by Michael Watson on September 26, 2022

Organization Trends
Government as a Special Interest in “Home Equity Theft”
Special interests are critical to a healthy civil society. They represent one of the most effective ways for private citizens to engage on issues that are personally important to them.
by Robert Stilson on June 1, 2022

Deception & Misdirection
Highlights from Scott Walter’s Answers to Questions for the Record from Sen. Whitehouse
“It is immoral for government to force citizens’ support of public causes to be made known to persons—in government and outside it—who would use the information to harass those citizens,”…
by Scott Walter on April 15, 2021

Featured Items
Scott Walter Testifies to a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on “Dark Money”
My preferred definition of “dark money” came from a witty man who said: Dark money is support for speech the Left wants to silence. That definition reveals how “dark money”…
by Scott Walter on March 11, 2021

Featured Items
Scott Walter’s Written Statement Before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee
At Capital Research Center, where I work, we’re in our fourth decade of studying the sort of money flows discussed in the Captured Courts report issued by the Democratic Policy…
by Scott Walter on March 11, 2021

Regulation
“Certificates of public convenience” protect the powerful, not the public
This article was originally posted at Philanthropy Daily. Now that the election is over, it’s clear that one reason for Donald Trump’s victory was that a great many…
by Martin Morse Wooster† on December 21, 2016