Digital Commons Network^™

We Shall Overcome: The Evolution Of Quotas In The Land Of The Free And The Home Of Samba, Stella Emery Santana

Seattle University Law Review

When were voices given to the voiceless? When will education be permitted to all? When will we need to protest no more? It’s the twenty-first century, and the fight for equity in higher education remains a challenge to peoples all over the world. While students in the United States must deal with the increase in loans, in Brazil, only around 20% of youth between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four have a higher education degree.

The primary objective of this Article is to conduct an in-depth comparative analysis of the development, implementation, and legal adjudication of educational quota systems within …

Legal Transplantation Or Legal Innovation? Equity-Crowdfunding Regulation In Taiwan After Title Iii Of The U.S. Jobs Act, Chang-Hsien Tsai

Chang-hsien (Robert) TSAI

A Preliminary Look At State Structures For Regulating Financial Services, Elizabeth F. Brown

Elizabeth F Brown

Within the past thirty-five years approximately fifty nations have consolidated their financial regulatory agencies into either a single integrated agency or into two semi-integrated agencies. The United States has resisted this trend, due in part to a concern that the costs of such significant consolidation would exceed its benefits. The existing studies that compare the costs of the consolidated regulators around the world with the United States regime have often been discounted because they have been unable to control for differences in culture and regulatory intensity between those other countries and the United States. This article attempts to address this …

The Regulation Of U.S. Money Market Funds: Lessons From Europe, Latoya C. Brown

Latoya C. Brown, Esq.

The recent financial crisis challenged long held perceptions of money market funds (“MMFs”) as stable and highly liquid instruments. Regulators in the US and in Europe now seek to impose additional rules on MMFs to avoid another significant failure as happened to the Reserve Fund. In the US, the debate is drawing even more media attention as question of which regulatory body - such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Treasury Department, and the Financial Stability Oversight Council – should lead the way has taken interesting twists and turns. This paper examines primary reform options being proposed in the …

Regulation Not Prohibition: The Comparative Case Against The Insurable Interest Doctrine, Sharo Michael Atmeh

Sharo M Atmeh

American law requires an insurable interest—a pecuniary or affective stake in the subject of an insurance policy—as a predi-cate to properly obtaining insurance. In theory, the rule prevents both wagering on individual lives and moral hazard. In practice, the doctrine is avoided by complex insurance transaction structuring to effectuate both origination and transfers of insurance by individuals without an insurable interest. This paper argues that it is time to ab-andon the insurable interest doctrine. As both the English and Aus-tralian experiences indicate, elimination of the insurable interest doctrine will have little detrimental pecuniary effect on the insurance industry, while freeing …

New Governance In The Teeth Of Human Frailty: Lessons From Financial Regulation, Cristie L. Ford

Cristie L. Ford

New Governance scholarship has made important theoretical and practical contributions to a broad range of regulatory arenas, including securities and financial markets regulation. In the wake of the global financial crisis, question about the scope of possibilities for this scholarship are more pressing than ever. Is new governance a full-blown alternative to existing legal structures, or is it a useful complement? Are there essential preconditions to making it work, or can a new governance strategy improve any decision making structure? If there are essential preconditions, what are they? Is new governance “modular” – that is, does it still confer benefits …

Principles-Based Securities Regulation In The Wake Of The Global Financial Crisis, Cristie L. Ford

Cristie L. Ford

This paper seeks to re-examine, and ultimately to restate the case for, principles-based securities regulation in light of the global financial crisis and related developments. Prior to the onset of the crisis, the concept of more principles-based financial regulation was gaining traction in regulatory practice and policy circles, particularly in the United Kingdom and Canada. The crisis of course cast financial regulatory systems internationally, including more principles-based approaches, into severe doubt. This paper argues that principles-based securities regulation as properly understood remains a viable and even necessary policy option, which offers solutions to the real-life and theoretical challenge that the …

Changing The Paradigm Of Stock Ownership From Concentrated Towards Dispersed Ownership? Evidence From Brazil And Consequences For Emerging Countries, Erica Gorga

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

This paper analyzes micro-level dynamics of changes in ownership structures. It investigates a unique event: changes in ownership patterns currently taking place in Brazil. It builds upon empirical evidence to advance theoretical understanding of how and why concentrated ownership structures can change towards dispersed ownership.

Commentators argue that the Brazilian capital markets are finally taking off. The number of listed companies and IPOs in the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange (Bovespa) has greatly increased. Firms are migrating to Bovespa’s special listing segments, which require higher standards of corporate governance. Companies have sold control in the market, and the stock market has …

The Us Subprime Mbs Crisis: New Legislative Agenda And Potential Ramifications For Foreign Jurisdictions, Yuliya Guseva

Cornell Law School Inter-University Graduate Student Conference Papers

The recent US liquidity crisis, triggered by the failure of mortgage-related securities, produced long-lasting ramifications inside and outside of the US. International financial indicators and the housing markets demonstrate that the mortgage-related liquidity problems keep reverberating throughout the US and the global economy. In the US, even such giants as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which were expected to inject market liquidity, have declared considerable losses from subprime MBS. The ongoing crisis provided a fertile ground for a number of publications and research. However, a range of fundamental issues regarding legislative responses to the US MBS crisis and its international …

E Pluribus Unum -- Out Of Many, One: Why The United States Needs A Single Financial Services Agency, Elizabeth F. Brown

Elizabeth F Brown

The United States needs to consolidate the over 115 existing state and federal agencies that regulate banking, securities and insurance firms and their products and services into a single, federal financial services agency; a U.S. Financial Services Agency (“US FSA”). The US FSA would be able to more effectively regulate the U.S. financial services industry than the existing regulatory regime. The current U.S. financial regulatory regime suffers from a range of problems, including an inability to anticipate and plan for future financial crises, an inability by regulators to quickly adapt to market innovations and developments, inconsistent regulations for financial products …