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The Supreme Court And The Definition Of "Security": The"Context" Clause, "Investment Contract" Analysis, And Their Ramifications, Marc I. Steinberg, William E. Kaulbach

Vanderbilt Law Review

In two recent decisions' construing the scope of the federal securities acts, the Supreme Court apparently has undertaken to alleviate some of the confusion and uncertainty surrounding the most fundamental question in securities law: the definition of"security" itself. Much of the existing confusion can be traced to earlier decisions of the Court that first implied, and later held,that the regulatory or offering context in which a particular transaction occurs could function to exclude the transaction from cover-age of the securities laws' anti-fraud provisions. This result could follow even though the transaction in question otherwise might satisfy the traditional Howey or …