Other GovCon Topics

The Christian Doctrine comes into play when the FAR requires a certain clause be included in a government contract but the government fails to include it. Depending on the nature and substance of the government contract in question, the FAR requires that certain FAR contract clauses be included in the contract (most of which...

Payment and other protections for subcontractors on federal contracts are of perennial interest to Members and committees of Congress, in part, because many subcontractors are small businesses, and it is the “declared policy of the Congress that the Government should aid, counsel, assist, and protect, insofar as is possible, the interests of small business...

Congress enacted the Equal Access To Justice Act (“EAJA” or the “Act”) temporarily in 1980 before reauthorizing the statute permanently in 1985. Motivated in part by a desire to deter government overreach and wrongdoing, the Act significantly departed from the default American rule—that each party pays its own litigation costs, regardless of the outcome...

In 1984 Congress passed the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) to increase competition in government contracting and to impose more stringent restrictions on the award of noncompetitive–sole-source–contracts. While the Senate originally proposed a marketplace standard of “effective competition” (whereby two or more contractors acting independent of each other, and the Government, submit bids or...

In 1986, Congress amended the False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. § 3729 et seq. One of Congress’s objectives in modifying the Act was to encourage the use of qui tam actions in which citizens are authorized to bring, as “private Attorneys General,” lawsuits on behalf of the United States alleging frauds upon the government....

U.S. contractors operate under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR) which prevents controlled defense articles, technical data, and defense services from being exported to foreigners without Government approval.   This makes sense considering that the items, services, and technical data covered by the regulation and the Arms Export Control Act of 1976 are things...