As the U.S. Senate is hashing out an overhaul of the nation’s financial regulatory system, Anne Milgram ’96 and Professor Rachel Barkow have weighed in with an op-ed on a key issue law makers must address—preemption. Milgram, a senior fellow at the Law School’s Center on the Administration of Criminal Law, was New Jersey attorney general from June 2007 to January 2010. In “Keeping Consumer Cops on the Beat,” a jointly authored piece published May 13 on Politico.com, they caution against insulating banks from state-level regulation and law enforcement. In particular they point to a proposed version of financial reform introduced by Senate Republicans. “It gives the federal government exclusive control over national bank regulation—including mortgage lenders acquired as subsidiaries, which were at the center of the financial crisis,” they write. “States are also specifically prohibited from protecting consumers from banking and mortgage abuses.” The recent financial crisis, they argue, was caused in part because local law enforcers had their hands tied.
While serving as New Jersey attorney general, Milgram oversaw prosecution of mortgage-fraud cases. One focus of Barkow’s scholarship is the relationship between federal and local law enforcement.
Posted May 13, 2010