Securities Law Commons^™

Geothermal Resources Under The Mining Law Regime--Problems & Possibilities, Richard A. Grisel

Richard A Grisel

The development of geothermal resources has been greatly hampered by the legal and institutional framework governing geothermal energy resources. This framework has been plagued by conflicting mining and water laws, anachronistic common law systems of property rights, problematic legal classifications of geothermal resources, and jurisdictional variances from state to state and between states and the Federal government. These issues have combined to significantly hinder the development of what will be a vital resource for our nation’s future energy needs.

This thesis concerns one way to address the suboptimal development of geothermal energy resources. Using the Federal acquisition of exclusive airspace …

At War With The Environment, David A. Wirth

David A. Wirth

In this Article, Professor Wirth reviews the book National Defense and the Environment by Stephen Dycus, a recognized expert in both environmental and national security law. The emphasis of the book is on containing and remediating the environmental excesses of the American defense-industrial complex, with a domestic policy focus. While Professor Wirth considers Dycus’ work an intellectually rewarding and refreshing new entry into the ongoing environment-as-security colloquy, he does not consider the book to be accessible to a general audience given the book’s fundamentally legalistic nature.

Corporate Governance And Accountability, Renee M. Jones

Renee Jones

This book chapter on Corporate Governance and Accountability is a contribution to the book CORPORATE GOVERNANCE - SYNTHESIS OF THEORY, RESEARCH, AND PRACTICE (Wiley, forthcoming 2010), edited by Ronald Anderson and H. Kent Baker. This chapter describes the sources of corporate governance standards for American corporations and analyzes the accountability mechanisms designed to ensure that corporate officials act faithfully in their management of corporate affairs. The chapter focuses on the financial reporting system under the U.S. securities laws which forms the foundation of the accountability system, and discusses structures and rules designed to ensure the integrity of financial reporting. The …

Will The Sec Survive Financial Regulatory Reform?, Renee M. Jones

Renee Jones

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) conspicuous failures during the financial crisis of 2008 have led many to question the agency’s relevance in the modern financial era. Some commentators have called for the creation of new super-agencies to assume a substantial portion of the SEC’s duties. Others highlight enforcement failures and question the agency’s commitment to its investor protection mission. Despite its recent missteps and persistent calls for regulatory overhaul, the SEC’s future seems secure for now as President Obama’s reform proposals (the “Obama Plan”) as currentlyconceived preserve the agency’s independence. Although thus far the Obama Plan protects the SEC’s …

Legitimacy And Corporate Law: The Case For Regulatory Redundancy, Renee M. Jones

Renee Jones

This article provides a democratic assessment of the corporate law making structure in the United States. It draws upon the basic democratic principle that those affected by legal rules should have a voice in determining the substance of those rules. Although other commentators have noted certain undemocratic aspects of corporate law, this Article is the first to present a comprehensive assessment of the corporate regulatory structure from the perspective of democracy. It departs from prior accounts by looking past the states' role to consider the ways that federal regulation shores up the legitimacy of the overarching structure. This focus on …

Law, Norms, And The Breakdown Of The Board, Renee M. Jones

Renee Jones

This Article considers the dominant claim in corporate law literature that extra-legal mechanisms such as markets and social norms provide adequate safeguards against corporate mismanagement and opportunism. After noting recognized deficiencies in the arguments from market discipline, the Article draws on psychological insights to show that certain behavioral phenomena prevent social norms from appropriately constraining corporate conduct. It then argues that because neither markets nor social norms can sufficiently discipline corporate officials, a credible accountability mechanism is necessary to prevent director conduct standards from deteriorating. Unfortunately, an inveterate tradition of judicial deference in corporate law has undermined the role of …

Dynamic Federalism: Competition, Cooperation And Securities Enforcement, Renee M. Jones

Renee Jones

The concept of competition between the federal government and the states was central to the framers’ vision of our constitutional structure. In the framers’ view, federal-state regulatory competition ensured an alternative regime to citizens dissatisfied with the dominant regulator’s performance. Recently, the dynamics of federalism have shifted power in the securities enforcement field from the SEC to certain state securities regulators. The states, rather than the SEC, have led enforcement efforts in the Wall Street analyst conflicts and the mutual fund trading investigations. This shift in authority has prompted renewed debate over whether a uniform national system of securities regulation …

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 …

Commodity Swap Position Limit Rule May Help Return Price-Risk Management, Michael Greenberger

Michael Greenberger

No abstract provided.

Negotiability, Property, And Identity, James S. Rogers

James S. Rogers

In this Article, Professor Rogers challenges the assumption that securities transfer law has always been based on negotiable certificates and suggests that the reign of negotiability is a relatively recent, and brief, phase in the long history of investment securities trading. Professor Rogers posits that the difficulties currently facing the law of securities transfers are in large part due to the transition from paper to electronic representations of investments. To place these challenges into perspective, Professor Rogers first surveys the history of securities trading and then examines the theoretical underpinnings of the law of securities transfers.

Fiduciary Relationships Are Not Contracts, Scott Fitzgibbon

Scott T. FitzGibbon

No abstract provided.

Recuperação De Empresas Viáveis Em Dificuldades: Prevenção E Preservação De Valor [Restructuring Distressed Viable Business Entities: Prevention And Value Preservation], Bruno Ferreira

Bruno Ferreira

No abstract provided.

The Shadow Banking System And Its Legal Origins, Erik F. Gerding

Erik F. Gerding

The global financial crisis cannot be understood without closely analyzing the development and the failure of the shadow banking system. Shadow banking, in turn, cannot be understood without examining how law shaped it. This article provides a definition of the shadow banking system and describes the critical role law and legal change played in shaping it.

The shadow banking system describes a web of financial instruments (asset-backed securities, credit derivatives, money market mutual funds, repurchase agreements) that connected commercial and household borrowers to investors in capital markets. This system differs, however, from traditional bond markets and is marked by six …

Examining Timely Disclosure Of Material Information To Shareholders And The Privacy Concerns Of Executive Officers, Ufuoma Barbara Akpotaire

Ufuoma Barbara Akpotaire

On January 20, 1993, Michael Walsh, the former Chairman and CEO of Tenneco revealed to the public that he had brain cancer. This type of disclosure of health issues are arguable serious enough to affect Wall Street. Other company officials have previously made similar disclosures such as Hugh Martin, CEO of Pacific Biosciences who in October 2010 disclosed to his employees that he had cancer of the Blood (multiple myeloma), and Harry J. Pearce, the Vice President of General Motors, who disclosed in 2001 that he had leukemia.

The above public disclosures are however more the exceptions than the rule. …

Celebrating Earth Day And A Billion Acts Of Green, Ufuoma Barbara Akpotaire

Ufuoma Barbara Akpotaire

Today, April 22nd, is celebrated as Earth Day. The idea is to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth’s natural environment and was first celebrated on April 22, 1970. The idea for Earth Day is credited to Gaylord Nelson, a former U.S. Senator, after he witnessed some of the side effects of the 1969 massive oil spill in California.

The first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and in 2009, the United Nations joined in the celebration by designating April 22, “International Mother Earth Day.” I recently came across a video of the …

Will The Cftc Defy Congress's Mandate To Stop Excessive Speculation In Commodity Markets And Aid And Abet Hyperinflation In World Food And Energy Prices: Analysis Of The Cftc's Proposed Rules On Speculative Position Limits, Michael Greenberger

Michael Greenberger

On January 26, 2011, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Position Limits for Derivatives pursuant to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The proposed rules are designed to implement the historic Congressional mandate of the Commodity Exchange Act, as amended by Section 737 of the Dodd-Frank Act, to ban excessive speculation from the derivatives market, i.e., the speculation which exceeds the need for liquidity by commercial handlers hedging price risk in these markets. Section 737 is the result of multi-year consideration by Congress, during which a strong consensus was reached there …

Los Problemas De Agencia Entre Los Acreedores Y El Liquidador: Una Aproximación A Las Soluciones Desde La Jurisprudencia Administrativa, Pierino Stucchi

Pierino Stucchi

No abstract provided.

La Ciudadanía Económica En El Perú: El Consumidor, Pierino Stucchi

Pierino Stucchi

No abstract provided.

Activist Distressed Debtholders: The New Barbarians At The Gate?, Michelle M. Harner

Michelle M. Harner

The term “corporate raiders” previously struck fear in the hearts of corporate boards and management teams. It generally refers to investors who target undervalued, cash-flush or mismanaged companies and initiate a hostile takeover of the company. Corporate raiders earned their name in part because of their focus on value extraction, which could entail dismantling a company and selling off its crown jewels. Today, the term often conjures up images of Michael Milken, Henry Kravis or the movie character Gordon Gekko, but the alleged threat posed to companies by corporate raiders is less prevalent—at least with respect to the traditional use …

Overwhelming A Financial Regulatory Black Hole With Legislative Sunlight: Dodd-Frank’S Attack On Systemic Economic Destabilization Caused By An Unregulated Multi-Trillion Dollar Derivatives Market, Michael Greenberger

Michael Greenberger

It is now accepted wisdom that it was the non-transparent, poorly capitalized and almost wholly unregulated over-the-counter (“OTC”) derivatives market that lit the fuse that exploded the highly vulnerable worldwide economy in the fall of 2008.[1] Because tens of trillions of dollars of these financial products were pegged to the economic performance of an overheated and highly inflated housing market, the sudden collapse of that market triggered under-capitalized OTC derivative guarantees of the subprime housing market; and the guarantors’ multi-trillion dollar interconnectedness with thousands of other OTC derivatives’ counterparties within that OTC market (through interest rate, currency, foreign exchange, and …

Falling Short: Has The Sec’S Quest To Control Market Manipulation And Abusive Short-Selling Come To An End Or Has It Really Just Begun?, Richard Ramirez

Richard E. Ramirez, J.D. | CFCS

No abstract provided.

Requirements Of A Valid Islamic Marriage Vis-À-Vis Requirements Of A Valid Customary Marriage In Nigeria, Olanike Sekinat Odewale Mrs

Olanike Sekinat Adelakun

International Jurisdictional Competition Under Globalization: From The U.S. Regulation Of Foreign Private Issuers To Taiwan’S Restrictions On Outward Investment In Mainland China, Chang-Hsien Tsai

Chang-hsien (Robert) TSAI

Drawing a lesson from the story that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act drives away foreign issuers and then their physical exit provokes a change in the U.S. regulation of non-U.S. issuers, this article takes as another case study the phenomenon that Taiwanese firms list shares overseas, to further test how usual law market demand and supply forces (or underlying exit and voice rights) interplay under international jurisdictional competition. Put simply, both cases of the U.S. and Taiwan significantly elaborate that law market forces underlying international jurisdictional competition are similarly at work even on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. Specifically, globalization strengthens …

Prueba De Los Correos Electrónicos, Pablo A. Legón

Pablo A Legón

Breve anotación a fallo sobre el valor probatorio de los correos electrónicos en el proceso judicial