Law Commons^™

Making A Market For Corporate Disclosure, Kevin S. Haeberle, M. Todd Henderson

Kevin Scott Haeberle

It has long been said that market forces alone will result in a problematic under-sharing of information by public companies. Since the 1930s, the main regulatory response to this market failure has come in the form of the massive mandatory-disclosure regime that sits at the foundation of modern securities law. But this regime—especially when viewed along with its speech-chilling antifraud overlay—no doubt leaves society without all the corporate information from which it would benefit. The typical fix offered to the problem has been more of the same: add to the 100-plus-page list of what firms must disclose, often based on …

A New Market-Based Approach To Securities Law, Kevin S. Haeberle

Kevin Scott Haeberle

Modern securities regulation has three main areas, each of which is plagued by a core problem. Mandatory disclosure law leaves society with suboptimal disclosure, as the government calls for too little of some information (for example, management analysis of company prospects) and too much of other information (for example, data about trivial executive perks). Securities fraud law (specifically, its central fraud-on-the-market theory of reliance) yields damages at odds with any reasonable theory of compensation and deterrence. And insider trading law fails to achieve its ends because incentives to police illegal trading and tipping by executives are currently weak.

In this …

Legal Lines In Shifting Sand: Immigration Law And Human Rights In The Wake Of September 11, Daniel Kanstroom

Daniel Kanstroom

In March of 2004, a group of legal scholars gathered at Boston College Law School to examine the doctrinal implications of the events of September 11, 2001. They reconsidered the lines drawn between citizens and noncitizens, war and peace, the civil and criminal systems, as well as the U.S. territorial line. Participants responded to the proposition that certain entrenched historical matrices no longer adequately answer the complex questions raised in the “war on terror.” They examined the importance of government disclosure and the public’s right to know; the deportation system’s habeas corpus practices; racial profiling; the convergence of immigration and …

The Formless City Of Plato's Republic: How The Legal And Social Promotion Of Divorce And Same-Sex Marriage Contravenes The Principles And Undermines The Projects Of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, Scott Fitzgibbon

Scott T. FitzGibbon

In the Republic, Plato describes a stage in social decay called “formlessness,” where all sorts of differences are accepted and none is preferred. No one need hold office or obey. People are impatient with all the ties that ought to bind them. Plato's formess city displays three deplorable features. One is the denigration of law and custom. A second is ethical skepticism or nihilism. A third is the repudiation of duty. These features also characterize the divorce culture and the same-sex marriage movement. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights reflects a philosophy quite the reverse of Plato’s formless city. Its …