Law Commons^™

Towards A Data-Driven Financial System: The Impact Of Covid-19, Nydia Remolina

Centre for AI & Data Governance

The COVID-19 outbreak has a growing impact on the global economy and the financial sector, which plays a critical role in mitigating the unprecedented macroeconomic and financial shock caused by the pandemic. Given the unprecedented nature of the current crisis, financial regulators and supervisors, central banks, along with governments and legislatures face challenges to maintain financial stability, preserve the well-functioning core markets, and ensure the flow of credit to the real economy. Even though the COVID-19 has slowed down our daily lives and stopped the operation of many industries, it did not have the same effect in the data-driven finance …

The Debt Collection Pandemic, Pamela Foohey, Dalie Jimenez, Chris Odinet

Articles by Maurer Faculty

To curb the rapid spread of the coronavirus set to overwhelm the United States' healthcare system, in mid-March 2020, the federal government declared a national emergency. Many states followed suit by implementing shelter-at-home orders and people began social distancing across America. As of this writing, the United States' reaction to the unique and alarming threat of COVID 19 has partially succeeded in slowing the virus's spread. Saving people's lives, however, has come at a severe economic cost. Economic activity plummeted. Unemployment numbers soured to figures not seen since the Great Depression and countless other people saw their income disappear.

Americans' …

Bankruptcy’S Role In The Covid-19 Crisis, Edward R. Morrison, Andrea C. Saavedra

Faculty Scholarship

Policymakers have minimized the role of bankruptcy law in mitigating the financial fallout from COVID-19. Scholars too are unsure about the merits of bankruptcy, especially Chapter 11, in resolving business distress. We argue that Chapter 11 complements current stimulus policies for large corporations, such as the airlines, and that Treasury should consider making it a precondition for receiving government-backed financing. Chapter 11 offers a flexible, speedy, and crisis-tested tool for preserving businesses, financing them with government funds (if necessary), and ensuring that the costs of distress are borne primarily by investors, not taxpayers. Chapter 11 saves businesses and employment, not …

Driver For Contactless Payments, Ronald J. Mann

Faculty Scholarship

As a consumer, my primary experience with cash before the virus was standing in checkout lines observing the sluggish pace of cash transactions in front of me. Like so many things in our lives, the advent of the virus has changed the situation markedly. From the earliest days of infection, it has been far more unsettling to observe cash transactions knowing that the virus persists on paper and metal surfaces for days.

The dynamic that has driven the choices merchants offer in face-to-face retail transactions will change as well. Driven by the private exigencies of the retail environment, the last …

For Coöperation And The Abolition Of Capital, Or, How To Get Beyond Our Extractive Punitive Society And Achieve A Just Society, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

In hindsight, the term "capitalism" was always a misnomer, coined paradoxically by its critics in the nineteenth century. The term misleadingly suggests that the existence of capital produces a unique economic system or that capital itself is governed by economic laws. But that's an illusion. In truth, we do not live today in a system in which capital dictates our economic circumstances. Instead, we live under the tyranny of what I would call "tournament dirigisme": a type of state-directed gladiator sport where our political leaders bestow spoils on the wealthy, privileged elite.

We need to displace this tournament dirigisme with …

Executive Underreach, In Pandemics And Otherwise, David E. Pozen, Kim Lane Scheppele

Faculty Scholarship

Legal scholars are familiar with the problem of executive overreach, especially in emergencies. But sometimes, instead of being too audacious or extreme, a national executive's attempts to address a true threat prove far too limited and insubstantial. In this Essay, we seek to define and clarify the phenomenon of executive underreach, with special reference to the COVID-19 crisis; to outline ways in which such underreach may compromise constitutional governance and the international legal order; and to suggest a partial remedy.