Securities Law Commons^™

Legitimate Yet Manipulative: The Conundrum Of Open-Market Manipulation, Gina-Gail S. Fletcher

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Is manipulation possible in the absence of misconduct? This is the foundational inquiry at the heart of open-market manipulation. Open-market manipulation captures the attention of lawmakers and courts because it is market manipulation effected entirely through facially legitimate transactions. Whereas traditional, well-accepted forms of market manipulation involve deception, fraud, and monopolistic prices, open-market manipulation involves no objectively bad acts and, instead, is accomplished through permissible transactions executed on the open market. As enforcement of this form of manipulation increases, the question arises—when, if ever, is a legitimate transaction manipulative?

To the Securities Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission …

The Statutory Authority For Court-Ordered Disgorgement In Sec Enforcement Actions, Donna M. Nagy

Articles by Maurer Faculty

What empowers the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to seek, and federal district courts to order, the disgorgement of ill-gotten gains from securities law violators? The short answer, which stood largely unchallenged for 46 years, is that federal courts may award disgorgement, at the request of the SEC, pursuant to the equitable powers that Congress conferred in the jurisdictional provisions of the federal securities laws. During the 2017 oral argument in Kokesh v. SEC, however, five justices of the U.S. Supreme Court interjected statements expressing varying degrees of skepticism. The tenor of the questions during the Kokesh argument, as …