AMERICAN COUNSEL

Latest — 01 Aug 2026

Call for Amicus Support

Borenstein v. Goldshteyn — Court of Appeal of California, Second Appellate District, No. B355195 On appeal from Los Angeles Superior Court No. 22STFL08826 (Hon. Scott J. Nord) Counsel for Appellant Sofiya Goldshteyn invites amicus curiae participation in an appeal presenting a question of first impression under the California Constitution's

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The Interference Fallacy

Consider three people who have never met. The first runs a small business that sells through a dominant online marketplace. She would prefer to sell elsewhere, but her customers are on the platform and nowhere else, so she accepts its terms. The platform sets her fees, ranks her products beneath

California's COMPETE Act and the Recovery of the Antitrust Tradition

On July 21, 2026, the California Chamber of Commerce began spending millions of dollars to defeat a single bill. The campaign opened with a thirty-second advertisement and a slogan, urging Californians to "tell Sacramento we can't afford AB 1776."[1] The advertisement warns that the

The Legal Imperative to Protect Human Dignity from the Dehumanization of Electronic Surveillance

by J.R. Howell A person wakes before dawn and reaches for a phone. A prayer app opens, and a map records movement to work. Throughout the day, a search engine receives an anxious medical question, while a browser silently notices which article held attention and which headline was skipped.

Ticket Price Caps, Antitrust Drift, and the Return of Regulation

There is a lesson for the United States in the Canadian province of Ontario’s 2026 cap on ticket resale prices. The willingness of legislators to enact even a low degree of price controls on discretionary consumer items reflects a growing instinct: when antitrust law fails to discipline concentrated market

When Trusted Healthcare Software Quietly Hands Private Health Information to Someone Else’s AI

You go to the clinic. You interface with clinic staff, nurses, and maybe even a doctor. You’ve grown accustomed to technology at the hospital—diagnostic tools, tablets, computers, note-taking. In the United States, you take comfort knowing that HIPAA keeps your health information safe. When clinic staff use

Ambulance Roll-Ups, Consolidation, Private Equity and the Role of Antitrust

By J.R. Howell On April 11, 2026, Matt Stoller published “Emergency Prices: How Private Equity Captured the Ambulance Market” (available at https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/code-red-why-your-city-cant-affordor) (last visited April 13, 2026). This article takes a dive into the research and examines private

Preemption: The White House AI Framework’s Real Design

by J.R. Howell Beneath the administration’s language of innovation and national leadership, the March 2026 AI framework is best read as a proposal to displace state law, narrow accountability, and reorganize the market on terms that favor scale. A link to the White House's policy paper

When Courts Adopt AI in the Dark: Privacy, Legitimacy, and the Democratic Stakes of Los Angeles’s Learned Hand Experiment

by J.R. Howell Introduction On March 18, 2026 the Los Angeles Superior Court (LASC)—the nation’s largest trial court—quietly announced a limited pilot program with Learned Hand, a proprietary generative‑AI platform built specifically for judges. Court administrators described the tool as a “judicial sous chef” that

No Borrowed Crown: Supreme Court Holds Yearsley Is a Merits Defense, Not Immunity

by J.R. Howell The Supreme Court’s decision in GEO Group, Inc. v. Menocal, 607 U.S. ___ (2026), clarifies an issue that had become increasingly muddled in government-contractor litigation: Yearsley is a defense to liability, not an immunity from suit. That distinction has immediate procedural consequences. Because Yearsley

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AMERICAN COUNSEL

Authoritative legal analysis of tech, antitrust, privacy, and emerging jurisprudence.

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