Bernard Reams
Before joining the faculty at St. Mary’s University School of Law, Bernard Reams was a Professor of Law and Director of the Law Library at Washington University in St. Louis for twenty years. While at Washington University, he taught courses in technology and the law, health law, and education law. He also served as a Professor of Law and Associate Dean at St. John’s University in New York, where he taught medical jurisprudence and bioethics. Reams was also a Visiting Professor of Law at Seton Hall University and taught health law, disability law, and the law and bioethics. He was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Private Law in Hamburg, Germany in June 1995, June 1997, June-July 1998, and June-July 2001. Reams was Guest Professor at the Leopold-Franzens University of Innsbruck for the winter semester in 2008-2009.
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Congress passed ERISA over thirty years ago to protect the rights of employees who benefit from employer pension and welfare benefit plans. It did so with a series of regulations that promote uniformity in litigation across the various states through “strong preemption language.” The goal of uniformity arguably benefits workers by imposing regular standards of conduct which lend predictability to the scope of litigation, or its venue, and lead to consistency in the process.
However, ERISA has not entirely lived up to its initial purpose of providing workers a safety net. The so-called safety net, in fact, has often become a barrier obstructing plaintiffs in their pursuit of make-whole relief on claims that welfare benefits have been denied or mismanaged. ERISA’s preemption feature has produced the negative consequence of changing what were meant to be benefits to barriers. Analysis of the ERISA preemption scheme and the evolution of ERISA in the courts reveals exactly how ERISA has gone awry, and whether there remain any glimmers of hope for plaintiffs filing welfare benefits or pension claims.
For researchers attempting to bring together the materials involved in legislating and implementing of rules governing federal price and wage controls, it is important to understand the elusive nature of early official sources. In the same instance there is a desire by legal researchers to rely on the experience of the past in formulating the direction of the future. Those responsible for law making and for analyzing the legal issues of economic controls must refer to past activities in the price and wage area in trying to determine which paths future controls should take. Therefore, it is helpful to the researcher of wage and price controls to have an overview and bibliographic history of the literature and laws involved in this regulatory aspect of American economy.
Although colleges enjoy great discretion in deciding whether to confer degrees, once the college grants a degree, its discretion to revoke that degree is governed by due process guidelines. In Crook, the university involved was public, triggering the applicability of due process procedural safeguards.
The question remains--are private colleges and universities required to provide procedural safeguards to students faced with degree revocation? The receipt of state and federal financial assistance does not constitute state action. Although private universities are not required to afford the complete package of constitutional due process protections, courts expect them to provide minimal procedural protection to ensure fundamental fairness. Clearly, both public and private universities possess the authority to revoke degrees already conferred.
Congress passed ERISA over thirty years ago to protect the rights of employees who benefit from employer pension and welfare benefit plans. It did so with a series of regulations that promote uniformity in litigation across the various states through “strong preemption language.” The goal of uniformity arguably benefits workers by imposing regular standards of conduct which lend predictability to the scope of litigation, or its venue, and lead to consistency in the process.
However, ERISA has not entirely lived up to its initial purpose of providing workers a safety net. The so-called safety net, in fact, has often become a barrier obstructing plaintiffs in their pursuit of make-whole relief on claims that welfare benefits have been denied or mismanaged. ERISA’s preemption feature has produced the negative consequence of changing what were meant to be benefits to barriers. Analysis of the ERISA preemption scheme and the evolution of ERISA in the courts reveals exactly how ERISA has gone awry, and whether there remain any glimmers of hope for plaintiffs filing welfare benefits or pension claims.
For researchers attempting to bring together the materials involved in legislating and implementing of rules governing federal price and wage controls, it is important to understand the elusive nature of early official sources. In the same instance there is a desire by legal researchers to rely on the experience of the past in formulating the direction of the future. Those responsible for law making and for analyzing the legal issues of economic controls must refer to past activities in the price and wage area in trying to determine which paths future controls should take. Therefore, it is helpful to the researcher of wage and price controls to have an overview and bibliographic history of the literature and laws involved in this regulatory aspect of American economy.
Although colleges enjoy great discretion in deciding whether to confer degrees, once the college grants a degree, its discretion to revoke that degree is governed by due process guidelines. In Crook, the university involved was public, triggering the applicability of due process procedural safeguards.
The question remains--are private colleges and universities required to provide procedural safeguards to students faced with degree revocation? The receipt of state and federal financial assistance does not constitute state action. Although private universities are not required to afford the complete package of constitutional due process protections, courts expect them to provide minimal procedural protection to ensure fundamental fairness. Clearly, both public and private universities possess the authority to revoke degrees already conferred.