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Full-Text Articles in Law

Legitimacy And Impartiality As Basic Principles For Sovereign Debt Restructuring, Odette Lienau Nov 2017

Legitimacy And Impartiality As Basic Principles For Sovereign Debt Restructuring, Odette Lienau

Odette Lienau

This essay suggests that attentiveness to the principles of legitimacy and impartiality may contribute to the instrumental success of any sovereign debt restructuring, and highlights institutional elements or practices often associated with these goals. An additional question can be raised as to whether these principles might have a further claim to special consideration, as part of emerging customary international law or general principles of law. Any determination along these lines is made difficult by the fact that legitimacy is a composite principle, constituted of multiple procedural and substantive norms, and perhaps lacks the necessary specificity to be a legal rule …


Collaborative Gatekeepers, Stavros Gadinis, Colby Mangels University Of California - Berkeley Nov 2017

Collaborative Gatekeepers, Stavros Gadinis, Colby Mangels University Of California - Berkeley

Stavros Gadinis

In their efforts to hold financial institutions accountable after the 2007 financial crisis, U.S. regulators have repeatedly turned to anti-money-laundering laws. Initially designed to fight drug cartels and terrorists, these laws have recently yielded billion-dollar fines for all types of bank engagement in fraud and have spurred an overhaul of financial institutions’ internal compliance. This increased reliance on anti-money-laundering laws, we argue, is due to distinct features that can better help regulators gain insights into financial fraud. Most other financial laws enlist private firms as gatekeepers and hold them liable if they knowingly or negligently engage in client fraud. Yet, …


The $7 Trillion Question: Mutual Funds & Investor Welfare - Alternative Structures And Strategies For Investors, Richard A. Booth, Michael Degeorge, Joseph Hardiman, Henry Hu Oct 2017

The $7 Trillion Question: Mutual Funds & Investor Welfare - Alternative Structures And Strategies For Investors, Richard A. Booth, Michael Degeorge, Joseph Hardiman, Henry Hu

Richard A Booth

No abstract provided.


Why Cyclicality Matters To Access To Mortgage Credit, Patricia A. Mccoy, Susan M. Wachter Oct 2017

Why Cyclicality Matters To Access To Mortgage Credit, Patricia A. Mccoy, Susan M. Wachter

Patricia A. McCoy

Virtually no attention has been paid to the problem of cyclicality in debates over access to mortgage credit, despite its importance as a driver of tight credit. Housing markets are prone to booms accompanied by bubbles in mortgage credit in which lenders cut underwriting standards, leading to elevated loan defaults. During downturns, these cycles artificially impede access to mortgage credit for underserved communities. During upswings, these cycles make homeownership unnecessarily precarious for many who attain it. This volatility exacerbates wealth and income disparities by ethnicity and race. The boom-bust cycle must be addressed in order to assure healthy and sustainable …


Has The Mortgage Pendulum Swung Too Far? Reviving Access To Mortgage Credit, Patricia A. Mccoy Oct 2017

Has The Mortgage Pendulum Swung Too Far? Reviving Access To Mortgage Credit, Patricia A. Mccoy

Patricia A. McCoy

In the wake of the financial crisis, mortgage lending to lower-income and minority borrowers overcorrected and has not recovered. Although homeownership is a riskier investment than previously realized, still it remains a proven path to increased wealth on balance for lower-income households. There are a number of reasonable reforms that could achieve greater access to credit while containing default risk. These include strategies to reduce down payments safely and to keep monthly payments manageable, combined with fixed-rate loans. Prepurchase counseling is important to preparing applicants for the financial demands of homeownership and strengthening their credit histories, while rapid foreclosure prevention …


Foreword, Patricia A. Mccoy Oct 2017

Foreword, Patricia A. Mccoy

Patricia A. McCoy

In the wake of the financial crisis, mortgage lending to lower-income and minority borrowers overcorrected and has not recovered. Although homeownership is a riskier investment than previously realized, still it remains a proven path to increased wealth on balance for lower-income households. There are a number of reasonable reforms that could achieve greater access to credit while containing default risk. These include strategies to reduce down payments safely and to keep monthly payments manageable, combined with fixed-rate loans. Prepurchase counseling is important to preparing applicants for the financial demands of homeownership and strengthening their credit histories, while rapid foreclosure prevention …


Offshore Accounts: Insider's Summary Of Fatca And Its Potential Future, J. Richard Harvey Jr. Jun 2017

Offshore Accounts: Insider's Summary Of Fatca And Its Potential Future, J. Richard Harvey Jr.

Richard Harvey

No abstract provided.


From Paper To Electronic Order: The Digitalization Of The Check In The Usa, Benjamin Geva Jun 2017

From Paper To Electronic Order: The Digitalization Of The Check In The Usa, Benjamin Geva

Benjamin Geva

This article explores the various stages in the check payment in which electronic transmission has replaced physical delivery. Part I discusses converting the check into an electronic entry at a point of sale of goods and services. Part II addresses the electronic presentment of a check. Part III deals with the possible conversion of the check from paper to electronic, and vice versa, within the interbank check collection system. Interbank exchange of check images is the subject of Part IV. Part V addresses the electronic order that operates like a check but that has never been in a paper format. …


The Medieval Hawale: The Legal Nature Of The Suftaj And Other Islamic Payment Instruments, Benjamin Geva Jun 2017

The Medieval Hawale: The Legal Nature Of The Suftaj And Other Islamic Payment Instruments, Benjamin Geva

Benjamin Geva

By the middle of the eighth century CE the Arabs established their dominion from the Atlantic Ocean to west of the Persian Gulf. In the process, they spread Islam and established Islamic law as the law of the land throughout this entire vast territory. Until the rise of the Turkish Ottoman Empire between the 13th the 16th centuries CE, that territory included North Africa (both Egypt and the Maghreb), Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Arabia. The era of the pre-Ottoman Arab domination of those lands roughly coincides with the Middle Ages. During that time, centres of economic and financial activity …


The Fictitious Payee After Teva V. Bmo: Has The Pendulum Swung Back Far Enough?, Benjamin Geva Jun 2017

The Fictitious Payee After Teva V. Bmo: Has The Pendulum Swung Back Far Enough?, Benjamin Geva

Benjamin Geva

Under Section 20(5) of the Bills of Exchange Act (‘‘BEA s. 20(5)”) where on a bill of exchange ‘‘the payee is a fictitious or non-existing person, the bill may be treated as payable to bearer.” A bill of exchange includes a cheque. Where BEA s. 20(5) applies to a cheque, its effect is to reallocate forged endorsement losses from banks involved in the collection and payment of the cheque to the drawer. Quite recently, in commenting on Raza Kayani LLP v. Toronto-Dominion Bank, I highlighted the ongoing confusion in the judicial interpretation of BEA s. 20(5) (‘‘Kayani Comment”). That comment …


Electronic Verification Of Wire Payment Orders, Benjamin Geva Jun 2017

Electronic Verification Of Wire Payment Orders, Benjamin Geva

Benjamin Geva

Over the years, albeit less so in connection with consumer accounts, the bank's absolute liability became subject to exceptions. Particularly, bypassing a classical text explicitly to the contrary, it had been recognized that a customer's fault can lead to the forgery of the customer's own signature and hence to forgery losses.


The Order To Pay Money In Medieval Continental Europe, Benjamin Geva Jun 2017

The Order To Pay Money In Medieval Continental Europe, Benjamin Geva

Benjamin Geva

This chapter discusses the evolution of non-cash payment mechanisms in the course of the development of the medieval banking system in Europe. The chapter sets out three categories of a medieval continental financier. The first category, pawnbrokers, consisted of lenders who lent out of their capital primarily for consumption who played no role in the development of the payment system. The second category consisted of moneychangers who accepted deposits and whose practices were rooted in in the manual exchange of coins. The third category consisted of exchange bankers whose practices emerged from the exchange of money in long distance trade. …


Best Practice For The Uniform Treatment Of Wire Payments, Benjamin Geva Jun 2017

Best Practice For The Uniform Treatment Of Wire Payments, Benjamin Geva

Benjamin Geva

Like any method of payment, the wire transfer may be either an "on-us" or interbank payment. In Canada, as long as they are between large banks, interbank wire payments are processed through the Canadian Payments Association's ("CPA") Large Value Transfer System ("LVTS").


The Lender As Unconventional Fiduciary, Niels Schaumann Mar 2017

The Lender As Unconventional Fiduciary, Niels Schaumann

Niels Schaumann

This Article examines one kind of fiduciary relationship—one that develops from an ordinary, arms-length commercial relationship between a lender and a borrower. Although this prototype relationship exists in the broader context of “lender liability,” to which academic commentators and the practicing bar have paid a good deal of attention in recent years, the suggested analysis has as much to do with fiduciary relationships generally as it does with issues of lender liability. The unconventional fiduciary relationship examined here differs in several respects from the conventional fiduciary relationship, for example that of trustee-beneficiary. Perhaps the most obvious difference is that the …


A New Coalescence In The Housing Finance Reform Debate?, Patricia Mccoy, Susan Wachter Mar 2017

A New Coalescence In The Housing Finance Reform Debate?, Patricia Mccoy, Susan Wachter

Patricia A. McCoy

This policy brief examines recent proposals for reform of the housing finance system.


Representations And Warranties: Why They Did Not Stop The Crisis, Patricia Mccoy, Susan Wachter Mar 2017

Representations And Warranties: Why They Did Not Stop The Crisis, Patricia Mccoy, Susan Wachter

Patricia A. McCoy

During the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, representations and warranties (contractual statements enforceable through legal action) may have given investors false assurance that mortgage loans were being properly underwritten. This assurance in turn may have contributed to overinvestment in mortgage-backed securities in two ways. First, the assumption that legally enforceable penalties associated with reps and warranties would deter lax underwriting may have led to less monitoring of these contracts than would otherwise have occurred. In turn, the lack of monitoring of actual underwriting practices enabled the spread of lax lending practices. The existence of these reps and warranties and …


Investment Treaties Are About Justice, Frank J. Garcia Mar 2017

Investment Treaties Are About Justice, Frank J. Garcia

Frank J. Garcia

This Perspective argues that investment law is ripe for a paradigm shift away from pure capital protection. Rather, investment law should be recognized as part of a comprehensive global economic governance system for ensuring justice and the rule of law, in this case in the allocation of investment capital.