Law Commons^™

Cryptoassets And Their Regulation Under Uk And Eu Law In The Post-Brexit Uk, Sarah Jane Hughes, Sara Kobal

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Cryptoassets are used increasingly as stores of value, means of making payments in domestic and cross-border transactions(including person-to-person (“P2P”) payments), and as enterprise solutions for speedier execution of trades in financial instruments or other commerce. Their emergence from the work of Satoshi Nakamoto to real-world applications has prompted attention from legislatures, regulators including law enforcement agencies, service providers and adopters.

The UK, as well as other nations, has used its legislative and regulatory authority to attract crypto-businesses and other financial-services innovators to its shores. Because some nations seek to entice financial innovations and others remain sceptical, tensions will arise between …

Esg And Climate Change Blind Spots: Turning The Corner On Sec Disclosure, Cynthia A. Williams, Donna M. Nagy

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article examines four areas in which the SEC, for more than a decade, resisted reform or impeded shareholders’ access to sought-after environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information. These areas are: (1) the SEC’s refusal to act on several rulemaking petitions submitted during the years 2009 to 2018, which called for expanded ESG disclosure; (2) the SEC’s grudging promulgation of rules concerning social disclosures as required by Congress in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010; (3) the SEC’s 2020 revisions to SEC Rule 14a-8, which make the submission of shareholder proposals more difficult, thereby thwarting investor efforts to raise ESG concerns; …

Tangibility As Technology, João Marinotti

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Property law has traditionally relied on tangible boundaries to delineate legal thinghood and to inform the bounds of in rem rights and duties. Unfortunately, property doctrines have fossilized around tangibility, causing fragmentation in the legal treatment of digital assets. In the United States, for example, cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) may simultaneously be classified as commodities, securities, currencies, assets, or not property at all, depending on the jurisdiction, domain, or specific asset in question. This fragmented system of overlapping legal treatments increases the information cost of using digital assets, decreases efficiency, and ultimately hinders future innovation.

In this Article, I …

Developments In The Laws Affecting Electronic Payments And Financial Services, Sarah Jane Hughes, Steve Middlebrook, Tom Kierner

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This survey year offered developments too numerous to cover, as often is the case. We debated which developments to include and decided to showcase different types of products and services, different providers, and different regulators. Part II views issues related to stimulus payments arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. Part III reports on litigation over whether retailers must offer gift cards printed in Braille. Part IV looks at recent actions of the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") related to payment processors and others. Part V describes amendments to the "remittance" regulation promulgated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ("CFPB"). Part VI focuses …

Fintech's Role In Exacerbating Or Reducing The Wealth Gap, Pamela Foohey, Nathalie Martin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Research shows that Black, Latinx, and other minorities pay more for credit and banking services, and that wealth accumulation differs starkly between their households and white households. The link between debt in-equality and the wealth gap, however, remains less thoroughly explored, particularly in light of new credit products and debt-like banking services, such as early wage access and other fintech innovations. These innovations both hold the promise of reducing racial and ethnic disparities in lending and bring concerns that they may be exploited in ways that perpetuate inequality. They also come at a time when policy makers are considering how …