Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Law
Disclosure’S Effects: Wikileaks And Transparency, Mark Fenster
Disclosure’S Effects: Wikileaks And Transparency, Mark Fenster
UF Law Faculty Publications
Constitutional, criminal, and administrative laws regulating government transparency, and the theories that support them, rest on the assumption that the disclosure of information has transformative effects: disclosure can inform, enlighten, and energize the public, or it can create great harm and stymie government operations. To resolve disputes over difficult cases, transparency laws and theories typically balance disclosure’s beneficial effects against its harmful ones—what I have described as transparency’s balance. WikiLeaks and its vigilante approach to massive document leaks challenge the underlying assumption about disclosure’s effects in two ways. First, WikiLeaks’ ability to receive and distribute leaked information cheaply, quickly, and …
Executive Trade Secrets, Tom C.W. Lin
Executive Trade Secrets, Tom C.W. Lin
UF Law Faculty Publications
The law discriminates among a corporation’s secrets. In the eyes of the law, commercial secrets of corporations are legitimate secrets that deserve legal protection and nondisclosure, but personal secrets of executives are not as deserving of legal protection and nondisclosure. This divergent treatment of secrets has resulted in a legal landscape of perplexing, paradoxical paths for corporations and executives concerning executive disclosures — a precarious landscape that has left corporations and investors dangerously susceptible to revelations of private facts that shock market valuation and institutional stability.
This Article explores this divergent treatment of secrets in the context of public corporations …