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Full-Text Articles in Law
Panel Effects In Administrative Law: A Study Of Rules, Standards, And Judicial Whistleblowing, Morgan Hazelton, Kristin E. Hickman, Emerson Tiller
Panel Effects In Administrative Law: A Study Of Rules, Standards, And Judicial Whistleblowing, Morgan Hazelton, Kristin E. Hickman, Emerson Tiller
SMU Law Review
In this article, we consider whether “panel effects”—that is, the condition where the presence, or expected voting behavior, of one judge on a judicial panel influences the way another judge, or set of judges, on the same panel votes—varies depending upon the form of the legal doctrine. In particular, we ask whether the hand of an ideological minority appellate judge (that is, a Democrat-appointed judge with two Republican appointees or a Republican-appointed judge with two Democrat appointees) is strengthened by the existence of a legal doctrine packaged in the form of a rule rather than a standard. Specifically, we unbundle …
The Icarus Syndrome: How Credit Rating Agencies Lost Their Quasi Immunity, Norbert Gaillard, Michael Waibel
The Icarus Syndrome: How Credit Rating Agencies Lost Their Quasi Immunity, Norbert Gaillard, Michael Waibel
SMU Law Review
Subsequent to the 2007–2008 subprime crisis, the SEC and the US Senate discovered that it was common practice for major credit rating agencies (CRAs) to produce inflated and inaccurate structured finance ratings. A host of explanations were posited on how this was able to happen from the “issuer pays” model of CRAs and conflicts of interest to underscoring the CRA’s regulatory license and their ensuing insulation from legal liability. Historically, credit ratings were akin to opinions. However, when courts started to consider structured finance ratings as commercial speech in the 2000s, CRAs became more vulnerable to litigation. This article studies …