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Full-Text Articles in Law
When Soft Law Meets Hard Politics: Taming The Wild West Of Nonprofit Political Involvement, Lloyd Histoshi Mayer
When Soft Law Meets Hard Politics: Taming The Wild West Of Nonprofit Political Involvement, Lloyd Histoshi Mayer
Journal Articles
Beginning in the 1990s and continuing to today, many of the legal and psychological barriers to nonprofits becoming involved in electoral politics have fallen. At the same time, political divisions have sharpened, causing candidates, political parties, and their supporters to scramble ever more aggressively for any possible edge in winner-take-all political contests. In the face of these developments, many nonprofits have violated the remaining legal rules applicable to their political activity with little fear of negative consequences, especially given vague rules and a paucity of enforcement resources. Such violations include underreporting of political activity in government filings, fly-by-night organizations that …
Politics And The Public’S Right To Know, Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer
Politics And The Public’S Right To Know, Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer
Journal Articles
In the United States it is taken for granted that members of the public should have access to information about their government. This access takes many forms, including the ability to obtain copies of government documents, the ability to attend meetings of government officials, and the related obligations of government officials to document their activities and to reveal certain otherwise private information about themselves. This access also is often limited by countervailing concerns, such as the privacy of individual citizens and national security. Nevertheless, the presumption both at the federal level and in every state is to provide such access. …
Disclosures About Disclosure, Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer
Disclosures About Disclosure, Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer
Journal Articles
An often overlooked aspect of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Citizens United v. FEC is the sharply contrasting factual accounts regarding disclosure of independent election-related spending. For eight of the Justices, such disclosure is constitutionally defensible because it enables voters to make informed decisions. For Justice Thomas, however, such disclosure is constitutionally suspect because of its potential to result in retaliation and related chilling of First Amendment speech in the form of financial contributions. The continuing importance of these contrasting narratives can be found not only in the pending Supreme Court case of Doe v. Reed, in which the …
What Is This “Lobbying” That We Are So Worried About?, Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer
What Is This “Lobbying” That We Are So Worried About?, Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer
Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer
Lobbying is both an essential part of our democratic process and a source of some of our greatest fears about dangers to that process. Yet when Congress, the public, and scholars consider loosening or, as is more often the case, tightening the restrictions on lobbying, they usually assume that everyone knows what activities are in fact “lobbying.” They therefore overlook the fact that multiple definitions of lobbying currently exist in the various federal laws addressing lobbying. This Article seeks to fill this gap by answering the question of how lobbying should be defined for purposes of the existing federal laws …
Sarbanes-Oxley, Kermit The Frog, And Competition Regarding Audit Quality, Matthew J. Barrett
Sarbanes-Oxley, Kermit The Frog, And Competition Regarding Audit Quality, Matthew J. Barrett
Journal Articles
The regulatory scheme after Sarbanes-Oxley has significantly improved public company audits in the United States, or at least has demonstrated the potential to do so, but the obligation to preserve client confidentially still prevents auditors from competing for new clients on the basis of audit quality. This paper suggests a simple way for the SEC to facilitate such competition within the existing regulatory framework. The SEC should require issuers and registrants to disclose whether their independent audits uncovered any financial fraud and, within specified ranges, the number and amount of all audit adjustments incorporated into the financial statements filed with …